Speaking of the one God who reveals himself in many forms and under
many names, Augustine says: “_Ipse in aethere sit Jupiter, ipse in
aëre Juno, ipse in mare Neptunus ... Liber in vineis, Ceres in
frumentis, Diana in silvis_,” etc. (_De civitate Dei_, iv. 11).
Footnote 412:
Servius on Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 332: “_Nam, ut diximus, et omnis
quercus Jovi est consecrata, et omnis lucus Dianae._”
Footnote 413:
W. H. Roscher, _Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie_, i. 1005; H.
Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, Nos. 3266-3268.
Footnote 414:
Dittenberger, _Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum_, 2nd Ed., No. 568; Ch.
Michel, _Recueil d’inscriptions grecques_, No. 686; E. S. Roberts,
_Introduction to Greek Epigraphy_, ii., No. 139.
Footnote 415:
Dittenberger, _op. cit._ No. 653, lines 79 _sqq._; Ch. Michel, _op.
cit._, No. 694. As to the grove see Pausanias, iv. 33. 4 _sq._
Footnote 416:
Dittenberger, _op. cit._, No. 929, lines 80 _sqq._ Compare _id._ No.
569; Pausanias, ii. 28. 7.
Footnote 417:
H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 4911.
Footnote 418:
Cato, _De agri cultura_, 139.
Footnote 419:
Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 85, ed. C. O. Müller; Pliny, _Nat.
Hist._ xviii. 6.
Footnote 420:
G. Henzen, _Acta Fratrum Arvalium_ (Berlin, 1874), pp. 136-143; H.
Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, ii., Nos. 5042, 5043, 5045,
5046, 5048.
Footnote 421:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 749-755.
Footnote 422:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xii. 3.
Footnote 423:
Seneca, _Epist._ iv. 12. 3. See further L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 108 _sqq._ For evidence of the poets he
refers to Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 332 _sqq._; Tibullus, i. 1. 11; Ovid,
_Amores_, iii. 1. 1 _sq._
Footnote 424:
On Diana as a huntress see H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae
selectae_, Nos. 3257-3266. For indications of her care for domestic
cattle see Livy, i. 45; Plutarch, _Quaestiones Romanae_, 4; and above,
vol. i. p. 7.
Footnote 425:
Virgil, _Aen._, viii. 600 _sq._, with Servius’s note.
Footnote 426:
M. A. Castren, _Vorlesungen über die finnische Mythologie_ (St.
Petersburg, 1853), pp. 92-99.
Footnote 427:
P. v. Stenin, “Über den Geisterglauben in Russland,” _Globus_, lvii.
(1890), p. 283.
Footnote 428:
J. Abercromby, _The Pre- and Proto-historic Finns_ (London, 1898), i.
161.
Footnote 429:
Mathias Michov, “De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europea,” in _Novus Orbis
regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_, p. 457.
Footnote 430:
C. Snouck Hurgronje, _Het Gajōland en zijne Bewoners_ (Batavia, 1903),
pp. 351, 359.
Footnote 431:
See vol. i. p. 14.
Footnote 432:
Arrian, _Cynegeticus_, 33 _sq._
Footnote 433:
The Galatians retained their Celtic speech as late as the fourth
century of our era, for Jerome says that in his day their language
hardly differed from that of the Treveri, a Celtic tribe on the
Moselle, whose name survives in _Treves_. See Jerome, _Commentar. in
Epist. ad Galatas_, lib. ii. praef. (Migne’s _Patrologia Latina_, vol.
xxvi. col. 357).
Footnote 434:
See below, p. 363.
Footnote 435:
H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 4633; Ihm,
in Pauly-Wissowa’s _Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft_, ii. 616, _s.v._ “Arduinna”; compare _id._ i.
104, _s.v._ “Abnoba.”
Footnote 436:
F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_
(Münster i. W., 1890), p. 125.
Footnote 437:
J. H. Schmitz, _Sitten und Bräuche, Lieder, Sprüchwörter und Räthsel
des Eifler Volkes_ (Treves, 1856-1858), i. 42 _sq._; A. Kuhn und W.
Schwartz, _Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_, pp. 393 _sq._;
Ch. Beauquier, _Les Mois en Franche-Comté_ (Paris, 1900), p. 90. In
Sweden and parts of Germany cattle are crowned on the day in spring
when they are first driven out to pasture, which is sometimes at
Whitsuntide (A. Kuhn, _Die Herabkunft des Feuers_, 2nd Ed., pp. 163
_sq._; L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, pp. 246 _sq._; A. Kuhn,
_Märkische Sagen und Märchen_, pp. 315 sq., 327 _sq._; P. Drechsler,
_Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien_, i. 123). Amongst the
Romans cattle were crowned at the Ambarvalia (Tibullus, ii. 1. 7
_sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 663); and asses and mill-stones were crowned
at Vesta’s festival on the ninth of June (Propertius, v. 1. 21; Ovid,
_Fasti_, vi. 311 _sq._). The original motive of all these customs may
have been the one indicated in the text. Perhaps the same explanation
might be found to apply to certain other cases of wearing wreaths or
crowns.
Footnote 438:
Tettau und Temme, _Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und
Westpreussens_, pp. 263 _sq._; A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, _Norddeutsche
Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_, p. 392; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Das
festliche Jahr_, p. 181; _id._, _Calendrier belge_, i. 423 _sq._; A.
Birlinger, _Volksthümliches aus Schwaben_, i. p. 278, § 437; R. Eisel,
_Sagenbuch des Voigtlandes_, p. 210; F. J. Wiedemann, _Aus dem inneren
und äusseren Leben der Ehsten_, p. 363; F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und
religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_, p. 128.
Footnote 439:
See above, pp. 52-55.
Footnote 440:
In Nepaul a festival known as Khichâ Pûjâ is held, at which worship is
offered to dogs, and garlands of flowers are placed round the necks of
every dog in the country (W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore
of Northern India_, Westminster, 1896, ii. 221). But as the custom is
apparently not limited to hunting dogs, the explanation suggested
above would hardly apply.
Footnote 441:
Catullus, xxxiv. 9-20; Cicero, _De natura deorum_, ii. 26. 68 _sq._;
Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 68 _sq._ It deserves to be remembered
that Diana’s day was the thirteenth of August, which in general would
be the time when the splendid harvest moon was at the full. Indian
women in Peru used to pray to the moon to grant them an easy delivery.
See P. J. de Arriaga, _Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru_ (Lima,
1621), p. 32.
Footnote 442:
See above, vol. i. p. 12.
Footnote 443:
In like manner the Greeks conceived of the goddess Earth as the mother
not only of corn but of cattle and of human offspring. See the Homeric
_Hymn to Earth_ (No. 30).
Footnote 444:
Strabo, iv. 1. 4 and 5, pp. 179 _sq._ The image on the Aventine was
copied from that at Marseilles, which in turn was copied from the one
at Ephesus.
Footnote 445:
Tacitus, _Annals_, xii. 8. The Romans feared that the marriage of
Claudius with his paternal cousin Agrippina, which they regarded as
incest, might result in some public calamity (Tacitus, _Annals_, xii.
5).
Footnote 446:
See above, pp. 107 _sqq._
Footnote 447:
See above, vol. i. pp. 20 _sq._, 40.
Footnote 448:
Herodotus, i. 181 _sq._
Footnote 449:
M. Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, pp. 117 _sq._; L. W.
King, _Babylonian Mythology and Religion_, pp. 18, 21.
Footnote 450:
H. Winckler, _Die Gesetze Hammurabis_ 2nd Ed., (Leipsic, 1903), p. 31
§ 182. The expression is translated “votary of Marduk” by Mr C. H. W.
Johns (_Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and Letters_,
Edinburgh, 1904, p. 60). “The votary of Marduk is the god’s wife vowed
to perpetual chastity, and is therefore distinct from the devotees of
Ištar. Like the ordinary courtesan, these formed a separate class and
enjoyed special privileges” (S. A. Cook, _The Laws of Moses and the
Code of Hammurabi_, London, 1903, p. 148).
Footnote 451:
M. Jastrow, _op. cit._ pp. 42 _sq._
Footnote 452:
C. Johnston in _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, xviii.
First Half (1897), pp. 153-155; R. F. Harper, _Assyrian and Babylonian
Literature_ (New York, 1901), p. 249. For the equivalence of Iyyar or
Airu with May see _Encyclopaedia Biblica_, _s.v._ “Months,” iii. coll.
3193 _sq._
Footnote 453:
Herodotus, i. 182.
Footnote 454:
G. Maspero, in _Journal des Savants_, année 1899, pp. 401-406; A.
Moret, _Du caractère religieux de la royauté Pharaonique_ (Paris,
1902), pp. 48-73; A. Wiedemann, _Herodots zweites Buch_ (Leipsic,
1890), pp. 268 sq. M. Moret shares the view of Prof. Maspero that the
pictures, or rather painted reliefs, were copied from masquerades in
which the king and other men and women figured as gods and goddesses.
As to the Egyptian doctrine of the spiritual double or external soul
(_Ka_), see A. Wiedemann, _The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the
Immortality of the Soul_ (London, 1895), pp. 10 _sqq._
Footnote 455:
A. Erman, _Die ägyptische Religion_ (Berlin, 1905), pp. 75, 165 _sq._;
compare _id._, _Ägypten und ägyptisches Leben im Altertum_, pp. 400
_sq._ As to the ghostly rule of the high priests of Ammon at Thebes
see further G. Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient
classique, les premières mêlées des peuples_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 559
_sqq._; J. H. Breasted, _A History of the Ancient Egyptians_ (London,
1908), pp. 350 _sq._, 357 _sq._; C. P. Tiele, _Geschichte der Religion
im Altertum_, i. (Gotha, 1896), p. 66.
Footnote 456:
Strabo, xvii. 1. 46, p. 816.
Footnote 457:
Diodorus Siculus, _Bibliotheca_, i. 47.
Footnote 458:
Plutarch, _Quaestiones conviviales_, viii. 1. 6 sq.; id., _Numa_, 4.
Footnote 459:
Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ iv. 143. Compare Horace, _Odes_, iii. 62
_sqq._
Footnote 460:
Herodotus, i. 182.
Footnote 461:
Pausanias, viii. 13. 1. As to the meaning of the title Essen see
Callimachus, _Hymn to Zeus_, 16; Hesychius, Suidas, and _Etymologicum
Magnum_, _s.v._ Ἕσσην. The ancients mistook the Queen bee for a male,
and hence spoke of King bees. See Aristotle, _Histor. animal._ v. 21
_sq._, ix. 40, pp. 553, 623 _sqq._, ed. Bekker; id., _De animalium
generatione_, iii. 10, p. 760, ed. Bekker; Aelian, _Nat. animal._ i.
10, v. 10 _sq._; Virgil, _Georg._ iv. 21, 68; W. Walter-Tornow, _De
apium mellisque apud veteres significatione_ (Berlin, 1894), pp. 30
_sqq._ The Essenes or King Bees are not to be confounded with the
nominal kings (_Basileis_) of Ephesus, who probably held office for
life. See above, vol. i. p. 47.
Footnote 462:
J. T. Wood, _Discoveries at Ephesus, Inscriptions from the Temple of
Diana_, pp. 2, 14; _Inscriptions from the Augusteum_, p. 4;
_Inscriptions from the City and Suburbs_, p. 38.
Footnote 463:
See B. V. Head, _Coins of Ephesus_ (London, 1880), and above, vol. i.
pp. 37 _sq._ Modern writers sometimes assert that the priestesses of
the Ephesian Artemis were called Bees. Certain other Greek priestesses
were undoubtedly called Bees, and it seems not improbable that the
priestesses of the Ephesian Artemis bore the same title and
represented the goddess in her character of a bee. But no ancient
writer, so far as I know, affirms it. See my note on Pausanias, viii.
13. 1.
Footnote 464:
Demosthenes, _Contra Neaer._ 73-78, pp. 1369-1371; Aristotle,
_Constitution of Athens_, iii. 5; Hesychius, _s.vv._ Διονύσου γάμος
and γεραραί; _Etymologicum Magnum_, _s.v._ γεραῖραι; Pollux, viii.
108; K. F. Hermann, _Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer_, 2nd Ed., § 32.
15, § 58. 11 _sqq._; Aug. Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum_
(Leipsic, 1898), pp. 391 _sqq._ From Demosthenes, _l.c._, compared
with Thucydides, ii. 15, it seems certain that the oath was
administered by the Queen at the time and place mentioned in the text.
Formerly it was assumed that her marriage to Dionysus was celebrated
at the same place and time; but the assumption as to the place was
disproved by the discovery of Aristotle’s _Constitution of Athens_,
and with it the assumption as to the time falls to the ground. As the
Greek months were commonly named after the festivals which were held
in them, it is tempting to conjecture that the sacred marriage took
place in the Marriage Month (_Gamelion_), answering to our January.
But more probably that month was named after the sacred marriage of
Zeus and Hera, which was celebrated at Athens and elsewhere. See
below, p. 143. This is the view of W. H. Roscher (_Juno und Hera_, p.
73, n. 217) and Aug. Mommsen (_Feste der Stadt Athen_, p. 383). From
the name Cattle-stall, applied to the scene of the marriage, Miss J.
E. Harrison ingeniously conjectured that in the rite Dionysus may have
been represented as a bull (_Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion_, p. 537). The conjecture was anticipated by Prof. U. von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, _Aristoteles und Athen_ (Berlin, 1893), ii.
42. Dionysus was often conceived by the Greeks in the form of a bull.
Footnote 465:
Above, pp. 92 _sq._
Footnote 466:
L. Preller, _Ausgewählte Aufsätze_ (Berlin, 1864), pp. 293-296;
compare his _Griechische Mythologie_, 4th ed., ed. C. Robert, i. 681
_sqq._
Footnote 467:
Hyginus, _Astronomica_, i. 5.
Footnote 468:
Tertullian, _Ad nationes_, ii. 7, “_Cur rapitur sacerdos Cereris si
non tale Ceres passa est?_” Asterius Amasenus, _Encomium in sanctos
martyres_, in Migne’s _Patrologia Graeca_, xl. col. 324, Οὐκ ἐκεῖ (at
Eleusis) τὸ καταβάσιον τὸ σκοτεινόν, καὶ αἱ σεμναὶ τοῦ ἱεροφάντου πρὸς
τὴν ἱερείαν συντυχίαι, μόνου πρὸς μόνην; Οὐχ αἱ λαμπάδες σβέννυνται,
καὶ ὁ πολὺς καὶ ἀναρίθμητος δῆμος τὴν σωτηρίαν αὐτῶν εἶναι νομίζουσι
τὰ ἐν τῷ σκότῳ παρὰ τῶν δύο πραττόμενα; Psellus, _Quaenam sunt
Graecorum opiniones de daemonibus_, p. 39. ed. J. F. Boissonade, τὰ δέ
γε μυστήρια τούτων, οἷα αὐτίκα τὰ Ἐλευσίνια, τὸν μυθικὸν ὑποκρίνεται
Δία μιγνύμενον τῇ Δηοῖ, ἤγουν τῇ Δήμητρι ... Ὕποκρίνεται δὲ καὶ τὰς
τῆς Δηοῦς ὠδῖνας. Ἱκετηρίαι γοῦν αὐτίκα Δηοῦς καὶ χολῆς πόσις καὶ
καρδιαλγίαι. Ἐφ’ οἷς καί τι τραγοσκελὲς μίμημα παθαινόμενον περὶ τοῖς
διδύμοις, ὅτιπερ ὁ Ζεύς, δίκας ἀποτιννὺς τῆς βίας τῇ Δήμητρι, τράγου
ὄρχεις ἀποτεμών, τῷ κόλπῳ ταύτης κατέθετο ὥσπερ δὴ καὶ ἑαυτοῦ (compare
Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, v. 20-23); Schol. on Plato, _Gorgias_,
p. 497 c, Ἐτελεῖτο δὲ ταῦτα (the Eleusinian mysteries) καὶ Δηοῖ καὶ
Κορῇ, ὅτι ταύτην μὲν Πλούτων ἁρπάξειε, Δηοῖ δὲ μιγείη Ζεύς;
Hippolytus, _Refutatio omnium haeresium_, v. 8, pp. 162, 164, ed.
Duncker and Schneidewin, Λέγουσι δὲ αύτον (God), φησί, Φρύγες καὶ
χλοερὸν στάχυν τεθερισμένον, καὶ μετὰ τοὺς Φρύγας Ἀθηναῖοι μυοῦντες
Ἐλευσίνια, καὶ ἐπιδεικνύντες τοῖς ἐποπτεύουσι τὸ μέγα καὶ θαυμαστὸν
καὶ τελειότατον ἐποπτικὸν ἐκεῖ μυστήριον ἐν σιωπῇ, τεθερισμένον
στάχυν. Ὁ δὲ στάχυς οὗτός ἐστι καὶ παρὰ Ἀθηναίοις ὁ παρὰ τοῦ
ἀχαρακτηρίστου φωστὴρ τέλειος μέγας, καθάπερ αὐτὸς ὁ ἱεροφάντης, οὐκ
ἀποκεκομμένος μέν, ὡς ὁ Ἄττις, εὐνουχισμένος δὲ διὰ κωνείου καὶ πᾶσαν
παρῃτημένος τὴν σαρκικὴν γένεσιν, νυκτὸς ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι ὑπὸ πολλῷ πυρὶ
τελῶν τὰ μεγάλα καὶ ἄρρητα μυστήρια βοᾷ καὶ κέκραγε λέγων· ἱερὸν ἔτεκε
πότνια κοῦρον Βριμὼ Βριμόν, τουτέστιν ἰσχυρὰ ἰσχυρόν. In combining and
interpreting this fragmentary evidence I have followed Mr. P. Foucart
(_Recherches sur l’origine et la nature des mystères d’Eleusis_,
Paris, 1895, pp. 48 _sq._; _id._, _Les Grands Mystères d’Eleusis_,
Paris, 1900, p. 69), and Miss J. E. Harrison (_Prolegomena to the
Study of Greek Religion_, pp. 549 _sqq._). In antiquity it was
believed that an ointment or plaster of hemlock applied to the genital
organs prevented them from discharging their function. See
Dioscorides, _De materia medica_, iv. 79; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxv.
154. Dr. J. B. Bradbury, Downing Professor of Medicine in the
University of Cambridge, informs me that this belief is correct.
“Although _conium_ [hemlock] is not used as an anaphrodisiac at the
present day, there can be no doubt that it has this effect. When
rubbed into the skin it depresses sensory nerve-endings and is
absorbed. After absorption it depresses all sympathetic nerve-cells.
Both these effects would tend to diminish organic reflexes such as
aphrodisia” (Dr. W. E. Dixon, Pharmacological Laboratory, Cambridge).
Pausanias seems to imply that the hierophant was forbidden to marry
(ii. 14. 1). It may have been so in his age, the second century of our
era; but an inscription of the first century B.C. shews that at that
time it was lawful for him to take a wife. See P. Foucart, _Les Grands
Mystères d’Eleusis_, pp. 26 _sqq._ (extract from the _Mémoires de
l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_, vol. xxxvii.).
Footnote 469:
Pausanias, ix. 3; Plutarch, quoted by Eusebius, _Praepar. Evang._ iii.
1 _sq._
Footnote 470:
Above, p. 64.
Footnote 471:
Above, p. 66.
Footnote 472:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 177.
Footnote 473:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 177 _sq._
Footnote 474:
J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 318 _sq._; W. Mannhardt,
_Baumkultus_, p. 178.
Footnote 475:
W. Hone, _Every Day Book_, ii. 595 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_,
p. 178.
Footnote 476:
With regard to Zeus as an oak-god see below, pp. 358 _sq._ Hera
appears with an oak-tree and her sacred bird the peacock perched on it
in a group which is preserved in the Palazzo degli Conservatori at
Rome. In the same group Pallas is represented with her olive-tree and
her owl; so that the conjunction of the oak with Hera cannot be
accidental. See W. Helbig, _Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen
klassischen Altertümer in Rom_ 2nd Ed., (Leipsic, 1899), i. 397, No.
587.
Footnote 477:
Pausanias, viii. 42.
Footnote 478:
At Cnossus in Crete, Diodorus Siculus, v. 72; at Samos, Lactantius,
_Instit._ i. 17 (compare Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, vi. 7); at
Athens, Photius, _Lexicon_, _s.v._ ἱερὸν γάμον; _Etymologicum Magnum_,
_s.v._ ἱερομνήμονες, p. 468. 52. A fragment of Pherecydes relating to
the marriage of Zeus and Hera came to light some years ago. See
Grenfell and Hunt, _New Classical and other Greek and Latin Papyri_
(Oxford, 1897), p. 23; H. Weil, in _Revue des Études grecques_, x.
(1897) pp. 1-9. The subject has been discussed by W. H. Roscher (_Juno
und Hera_, Leipsic, 1875, pp. 72 _sqq._). From the wide prevalence of
the rite he infers that the custom of the sacred marriage was once
common to all the Greek tribes.
Footnote 479:
_Iliad_, xiv. 347 _sqq._ Hera was worshipped under the title of
Flowery at Argos (Pausanias, ii. 22. 1; compare _Etymol. Magn._ _s.v._
Ἄνθεια, p. 108, line 48), and women called Flower-bearers served in
her sanctuary (Pollux, iv. 78). A great festival of gathering flowers
was celebrated by Peloponnesian women in spring (Hesychius, _s.v._
ἠροσάνθεια, compare Photius, _Lexicon_, _s.v._ Ἠροάνθια). The first of
May is still a festival of flowers in Peloponnese. See _Folk-lore_, i.
(1890) pp. 518 _sqq._
Footnote 480:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 176; P. Herrmann,
_Nordische Mythologie_ (Leipsic, 1903), pp. 198 _sqq._, 217, 520, 529;
E. H. Meyer, _Mythologie der Germanen_ (Strasburg, 1903), pp. 366
_sq._ The procession of Frey and his wife in the waggon is doubtless
the same with the procession of Nerthus in a waggon which Tacitus
describes (_Germania_, 40). Nerthus seems to be no other than Freya,
the wife of Frey. See the commentators on Tacitus, _l.c._, and
especially K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, iv. (Berlin,
1900) pp. 468 _sq._
Footnote 481:
Gregory of Tours, _De gloria confessorum_, 77 (Migne’s _Patrologia
Latina_, lxxi. col. 884). Compare Sulpicius Severus, _Vita S.
Martini_, 12: “_Quia esset haec Gallorum rusticis consuetudo,
simulacra daemonum candido tecta velamine misera per agros suos
circumferre dementia_.”
Footnote 482:
“Passio Sancti Symphoriani,” chs. 2 and 6 (Migne’s _Patrologia
Graeca_, v. 1463, 1466).
Footnote 483:
These crazy wretches castrate men and mutilate women. Hence they are
known as the Skoptsy (“mutilated”). See N. Tsakni, _La Russie
sectaire_, pp. 74 _sqq._
Footnote 484:
As to this feature in the ritual of Cybele, see _Adonis, Attis,
Osiris_, Second Edition, pp. 219 _sqq._
Footnote 485:
Max Buch, _Die Wotjäken_ (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 137.
Footnote 486:
E. A. Gait, in _Census of India, 1901_, vol. vi. part i. p. 190.
Footnote 487:
P. J. de Arriaga, _Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru_ (Lima, 1621),
p. 20.
Footnote 488:
Father Lacombe, in _Missions Catholiques_, ii. (1869) pp. 359 _sq._
Footnote 489:
_Relations des Jésuites, 1636_, p. 109, and _1639_, p. 95 (Canadian
reprint); Charlevoix, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, v. 225;
Chateaubriand, _Voyage en Amérique_ (Paris, 1870), pp. 140-142.
Footnote 490:
Rev. F. Hahn, “Some Notes on the Religion and Superstitions of the
Orāos,” _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, lxxii. part iii.
(Calcutta, 1904) p. 12. For another account of the ceremonies held by
the Oraons in spring see above, pp. 76 _sq._
Footnote 491:
P. Rascher, “Die Sulka,” _Archiv für Anthropologie_, xxix. (1904) p.
217.
Footnote 492:
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), ii. 118.
Footnote 493:
W. Crooke, _op. cit._ ii. 138.
Footnote 494:
A. B. Ellis, _The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, pp.
139-142.
Footnote 495:
_Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, Second Edition, pp. 58 _sq._
Footnote 496:
Sir Harry Johnston, _The Uganda Protectorate_ (London, 1902), ii. 677.
Footnote 497:
From notes sent to me by Mr. A. C. Hollis, 21st May 1908.
Footnote 498:
J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, _Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan
States_, part ii. vol. i. (Rangoon, 1901) p. 439.
Footnote 499:
E. W. Lane, _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_ (Paisley and
London, 1895), chap. xxvi. p. 500. The authority for the statement is
the Arab historian Makrizi.
Footnote 500:
_The North China Herald_, 4th May 1906, p. 235.
Footnote 501:
G. A. Wilken, “Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,”
_De Indische Gids_, June 1884, p. 994 (referring to Veth, _Het eiland
Timor_, p. 21); A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, ii. (Berlin, 1885) p. 8.
Footnote 502:
A. Bastian, _op. cit._ p. 11.
Footnote 503:
A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, i. (Berlin, 1884) p. 134.
Footnote 504:
_Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah, texte arabe, accompagné d’une traduction_,
par C. Defrémery et B. R. Sanguinetti (Paris, 1853-1858), iv. 126-130.
Footnote 505:
The Thanda Pulayans, on the west coast of India, think that the
phosphorescence on the surface of the sea indicates the presence of
the spirits of their ancestors, who are fishing in the backwaters. See
E. Thurston, _Ethnographic Notes in Southern India_, p. 293. Similarly
the Sulkas of New Britain fancy that the mysterious glow comes from
souls bathing in the water. See P. Rascher, “Die Sulka,” _Archiv für
Anthropologie_, xxix. (1904) p. 216.
Footnote 506:
For a list of these tales, with references to the authorities, see my
note on Pausanias, ix. 26. 7. To the examples there referred to add I.
V. Zingerle, _Kinder- und Hausmärchen aus Tirol_, Nos. 8, 21, 35, pp.
35 _sqq._, 100 _sqq._, 178 _sqq._; G. F. Abbott, _Macedonian
Folk-lore_, pp. 270 _sqq._ This type of story has been elaborately
investigated by Mr. E. S. Hartland (_The Legend of Perseus_, London,
1894-1896), but he has not discussed the custom of the sacred
marriage, on which the story seems to be founded.
Footnote 507:
Note on Pausanias, ix. 10. 5.
Footnote 508:
Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 226
_sqq._
Footnote 509:
R. Salvado, _Mémoires historiques sur l’Australie_ (Paris, 1854), p.
262.
Footnote 510:
H. Ternaux-Compans, _Essai sur l’ancien Cundinamarca_, pp. 6 _sq._
Footnote 511:
H. Coudreau, _Chez nos Indiens_ (Paris, 1895), pp. 303 _sq._
Footnote 512:
C. Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_ (London, 1903), ii. 57.
Footnote 513:
C. Lumholtz, _op. cit._ i. 402 _sq._
Footnote 514:
T. I. Fairclough, “Notes on the Basutos,” _Journal of the African
Society_, No. 14, January 1905, p. 201.
Footnote 515:
To the examples given in my note on Pausanias viii. 7. 2, add Ph.
Paulitschke, _Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, die geistige Cultur
der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl_ (Berlin, 1896), pp. 46, 50; “De
Dajaks op Borneo,” _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap_, xiii. (1869) p. 72; A. D’Orbigny, _Voyage
dans l’Amérique Méridionale_, ii. 93, 160 (see above, pp. 16
_sq._); F. Blumentritt, “Über die Eingeborenen der Insel Palawan
und der Inselgruppe der Talamianen,” _Globus_, lix. (1891) p. 167;
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), i. 46; Father Guillemé, in _Annales de la
Propagation de la Foi_, lx. (1888) p. 252.
Footnote 516:
W. F. W. Owen, _Narrative of Voyages to explore the Shores of Africa,
Arabia, and Madagascar_ (London, 1833), ii. 354 _sq._
Footnote 517:
H. Goldie, _Calabar and its Mission_, New Edition (Edinburgh and
London, 1901), p. 43.
Footnote 518:
_Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_, xxxiii. (1861) p. 152.
Footnote 519:
Father Guillemé, in _Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_, lx. (1888)
p. 253.
Footnote 520:
Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et
de l’Amérique-Centrale_, i. 327 _sq._
Footnote 521:
E. Aymonier, “Les Tchames et leurs religions,” _Revue de l’histoire
des religions_, xxiv. (1891) p. 213.
Footnote 522:
W. Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 2nd Ed., pp. 96-104.
Footnote 523:
S. I. Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_ (Chicago, 1902), p.
117.
Footnote 524:
S. I. Curtiss, _op. cit._ p. 119.
Footnote 525:
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), ii. 50 _sq._, 225 _sq._
Footnote 526:
_Census of India, 1901_, vol. xvii., _Punjab_, p. 164.
Footnote 527:
W. Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh_, iv. 425. As to the sect of the Maharajas, see above, vol. i.
pp. 406 _sq._
Footnote 528:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxi. 8.
Footnote 529:
S. I. Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_, pp. 116 _sq._;
Mrs. H. H. Spoer, “The Powers of Evil in Jerusalem,” _Folk-lore_,
xviii. (1907) p. 55; A. Jaussen, _Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab_
(Paris, 1908), p. 360.
Footnote 530:
J. M. Mackinlay, _Folk-lore of Scottish Lochs and Springs_ (Glasgow,
1893), p. 112.
Footnote 531:
A. C. Haddon and C. R. Browne, “The Ethnography of the Aran Islands,”
_Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, ii. (1893), p. 819.
Footnote 532:
R. C. Hope, _The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England_ (London,
1893), p. 122.
Footnote 533:
R. C. Hope, _op. cit._ pp. 107 _sq._
Footnote 534:
See, for example, Pausanias, ii. 15. 5, v. 7. 2 _sq._, vi. 22. 9, vii.
23. 1 _sq._, viii. 43. 1, ix. 1. 1 _sq._, ix. 34. 6 and 9.
Footnote 535:
Sophocles, _Trachiniae_, 6 _sqq._ The combat of Hercules with the
bull-shaped river-god in presence of Dejanira is the subject of a
red-figured vase painting. See Miss J. E. Harrison, _Prolegomena to
the Study of Greek Religion_ 2nd Ed., (Cambridge, 1908), Fig. 133, p.
434.
Footnote 536:
Aeschines, _Epist._ x. The letters of Aeschines are spurious, but
there is no reason to doubt that the custom here described was
actually observed.
Footnote 537:
See the evidence collected by Mr. Floyd G. Ballentine, “Some Phases of
the Cult of the Nymphs,” _Harvard Studies in Classical Philology_, xv.
(1904) pp. 97 _sqq._
Footnote 538:
F. Panzer, _Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie_, i. 107-110, ii. 550. At
Ragusa in Sicily an enormous effigy of a dragon, with movable tail and
eyes, is carried in procession on St. George’s Day (April 23rd); and
along with it two huge sugar loaves, decorated with flowers, figure in
the procession. At the end of the festival these loaves are broken
into little bits, and every farmer puts one of the pieces in his sowed
fields to ensure a good crop. See G. Pitrè, _Feste patronali in
Sicilia_ (Turin and Palermo, 1900), pp. 323 _sq._ In this custom the
fertility charm remains, though the marriage ceremony appears to be
absent. As to the mummers’ play of St. George, see E. K. Chambers,
_The Mediaeval Stage_ (Oxford, 1903), i. 205 _sqq._; A. Beatty, “The
St. George, or Mummers’, Plays,” _Transactions of the Wisconsin
Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters_, xv. part ii. (October, 1906)
pp. 273-324. A separate copy of the latter work was kindly sent to me
by the author.
Footnote 539:
See F. N. Taillepied, _Recueil des Antiquitez et singularitez de la
ville de Rouen_ (Rouen, 1587), pp. 93-105; A. Floquet, _Histoire du
privilége de Saint Romain_ (2 vols. 8vo, Rouen, 1833). Briefer notices
of the custom and legend will be found in A. Bosquet’s _La Normandie
romanesque et merveilleuse_ (Paris and Rouen, 1845), pp. 405-409; and
A. de Nore’s _Coutumes, mythes, et traditions des provinces de France_
(Paris and Lyons, 1846), pp. 245-250. The gilt _fierte_, or portable
shrine of St. Romain, is preserved in the Chapter Library of the
Cathedral at Rouen, where I saw it in May 1902. It is in the form of a
chapel, on the roof of which the saint stands erect, trampling on the
winged dragon, while the condemned prisoner kneels in front of him.
This, however, is not the original shrine, which was so decayed that
in 1776 the Chapter decided to replace it by another. See Floquet,
_op. cit._ ii. 338-346. The custom of carrying the dragons in
procession was stopped in 1753 because of its tendency to impair the
solemnity of the ceremony (Floquet, _op. cit._ ii. 301). Even more
famous than the dragon of Rouen was the dragon of Tarascon, an effigy
of which used to be carried in procession on Whitsunday. See A. de
Nore, _op. cit._ pp. 47 _sqq._ As to other French dragons see P.
Sébillot, _Le Folk-lore de France_, i. (Paris, 1904) pp. 468-470.
CHAPTER XIII
THE KINGS OF ROME AND ALBA
§ 1. Numa and Egeria
[Sidenote: Egeria at Nemi a nymph of water and of the oak, perhaps a
form of Diana.] From the foregoing survey of custom and legend we may
infer that the sacred marriage of the powers both of vegetation and of
water has been celebrated by many peoples for the sake of promoting the
fertility of the earth, on which the life of animals and men ultimately
depends, and that in such rites the part of the divine bridegroom or
bride is often sustained by a man or woman. The evidence may, therefore,
lend some countenance to the conjecture that in the sacred grove at
Nemi, where the powers of vegetation and of water manifested themselves
in the fair forms of shady woods, tumbling cascades, and glassy lake, a
marriage like that of our King and Queen of May was annually celebrated
between the mortal King of the Wood and the immortal Queen of the Wood,
Diana. In this connexion an important figure in the grove was the
water-nymph Egeria, who was worshipped by pregnant women because she,
like Diana, could grant them an easy delivery.[540] From this it seems
fairly safe to conclude that, like many other springs, the water of
Egeria was credited with a power of facilitating conception as well as
delivery. The votive offerings found on the spot, which clearly refer to
the begetting of children,[541] may possibly have been dedicated to
Egeria rather than to Diana, or perhaps we should rather say that the
water-nymph Egeria is only another form of the great nature-goddess
Diana herself, the mistress of sounding rivers as well as of umbrageous
woods,[542] who had her home by the lake and her mirror in its calm
waters, and whose Greek counterpart Artemis loved to haunt meres and
springs.[543] The identification of Egeria with Diana is confirmed by a
statement of Plutarch that Egeria was one of the oak-nymphs[544] whom
the Romans believed to preside over every green oak-grove;[545] for
while Diana was a goddess of the woodlands in general she appears to
have been intimately associated with oaks in particular, especially at
her sacred grove of Nemi.[546] Perhaps, then, Egeria was the fairy of a
spring that flowed from the roots of a sacred oak. Such a spring is said
to have gushed from the foot of the great oak at Dodona, and from its
murmurous flow the priestess drew oracles.[547] Among the Greeks a
draught of water from certain sacred springs or wells was supposed to
confer prophetic powers.[548] This would explain the more than mortal
wisdom with which, according to tradition, Egeria inspired her royal
husband or lover Numa.[549] When we remember how very often in early
society the king is held responsible for the fall of rain and the
fruitfulness of the earth, it seems hardly rash to conjecture that in
the legend of the nuptials of Numa and [Sidenote: The legend of the
nuptials of Numa and Egeria may be a reminiscence of a sacred marriage
which the kings of Rome contracted with a goddess of water and of
vegetation.] Egeria we have a reminiscence of a sacred marriage which
the old Roman kings regularly contracted with a goddess of vegetation
and water for the purpose of enabling him to discharge his divine or
magical functions. In such a rite the part of the goddess might be
played either by an image or a woman, and if by a woman, probably by the
Queen. If there is any truth in this conjecture, we may suppose that the
King and Queen of Rome masqueraded as god and goddess at their marriage,
exactly as the King and Queen of Egypt appear to have done.[550] The
legend of Numa and Egeria points to a sacred grove rather than to a
house as the scene of the nuptial union, which, like the marriage of the
King and Queen of May, or of the vine-god and the Queen of Athens, may
have been annually celebrated as a charm to ensure the fertility not
only of the earth but of man and beast. Now, according to some accounts,
the scene of the marriage was no other than the sacred grove of Nemi,
and on quite independent grounds we have been led to suppose that in
that same grove the King of the Wood was wedded to Diana. The
convergence of the two distinct lines of enquiry suggests that the
legendary union of the Roman king with Egeria may have been a reflection
or duplicate of the union of the King of the Wood with Egeria or her
double Diana. This does not imply that the Roman kings ever served as
Kings of the Wood in the Arician grove, but only that they may
originally have been invested with a sacred character of the same
general kind, and may have held office on similar terms. To be more
explicit, it is possible that they reigned, not by right of birth, but
in virtue of their supposed divinity as representatives or embodiments
of a god, and that as such they mated with a goddess, and had to prove
their fitness from time to time to discharge their divine functions by
engaging in a severe bodily struggle, which may often have proved fatal
to them, leaving the crown to their victorious adversary. Our knowledge
of the Roman kingship is far too scanty to allow us to affirm any one of
these propositions with confidence; but at least there are some
scattered hints or indications of a similarity in all these respects
between the priests of Nemi and the kings of Rome, or perhaps rather
between their remote predecessors in the dark ages which preceded the
dawn of legend.[551]
§ 2. The King as Jupiter
[Sidenote: The Roman king seems to have personated Jupiter and worn his
costume.] In the first place, then, it would seem that the Roman king
personated no less a deity than Jupiter himself. For down to imperial
times victorious generals celebrating a triumph, and magistrates
presiding at the games in the Circus, wore the costume of Jupiter, which
was borrowed for the occasion from his great temple on the Capitol; and
it has been held with a high degree of probability both by ancients and
moderns that in so doing they copied the traditionary attire and
insignia of the Roman kings.[552] They rode a chariot drawn by four
laurel-crowned horses through the city, where every one else went on
foot;[553] they wore purple robes embroidered or spangled with gold; in
the right hand they bore a branch of laurel and in the left hand an
ivory sceptre topped with an eagle; a wreath of laurel crowned their
brows; their face was reddened with vermilion; and over their head a
slave held a heavy crown of massy gold fashioned in the likeness of oak
leaves.[554] In this attire the assimilation of the man to the god comes
out above all in the eagle-topped sceptre, the oaken crown, and the
reddened face. For the eagle was the bird of Jove, the oak was his
sacred tree, and the face of his image standing in his four-horse
chariot on the Capitol was in like manner regularly dyed red on
festivals; indeed, so important was it deemed to keep the divine
features properly rouged that one of the first duties of the censors was
to contract for having this done.[555] The Greeks sometimes painted red
the face or the whole body of the wine-god Dionysus.[556] These customs
may have been a substitute for an older practice of feeding a god by
smearing the face, and especially the lips, of his idol with the blood
of a sacrificial victim. Many examples of such a practice might be
adduced from the religion of barbarous peoples.[557] As the triumphal
procession always ended in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, it was
peculiarly appropriate that the head of the victor should be graced by a
crown of oak leaves, for not only was every oak consecrated to
Jupiter,[558] but the Capitoline temple of the god was said to have been
built by Romulus beside a sacred oak, venerated by shepherds, to which
the king attached the spoils won by him from the enemy’s general in
battle.[559] We are expressly told that the oak crown was [Sidenote: The
oak crown as an emblem of Jupiter and of the Roman emperors.] sacred to
Capitoline Jupiter;[560] a passage of Ovid proves that it was regarded
as the god’s special emblem. Writing in exile on the shores of the Black
Sea, the poet sends the book which he has just composed to Rome to be
published there; he personifies the volume and imagines it passing along
the Sacred Way and up to the door of the emperor’s stately palace on the
Palatine hill. Above the portal hung shining arms and a crown of oak
leaves. At the sight the poet starts: “Is this, quoth I, the house of
Jove? For sure to my prophetic soul the oaken crown was reason good to
think it so.”[561] The senate had granted Augustus the right to have the
wreath of oak always suspended over his door;[562] and elsewhere Ovid
counts this among the more than mortal honours bestowed on the
emperor.[563] On the Capitol at Cirta there stood a silver image of
Jupiter wearing a silver crown of oak leaves and acorns.[564] Similarly
at Dodona, the most famous sanctuary of the oak in Greece, the image of
Zeus appears to have worn a chaplet of oak leaves; for the god is
constantly thus portrayed on coins of Epirus.[565] And just as Roman
kings appear to have personated the oak-god Jupiter, so Greek kings
appear to have personated the oak-god Zeus. The legendary Salmoneus of
Elis is certainly reported to have done so;[566] Periphas, an ancient
king of Athens, is said to have been styled Zeus by his people, and to
have been changed into an eagle by his jealous name-sake.[567] In Homer
kings are often spoken of as nurtured by Zeus and divine.[568] Indeed we
are told that in ancient days every Greek king was called Zeus.[569]
[Sidenote: To the Romans the breach between the human and the divine was
not so wide as it seems to us.] Thus we may fairly assume that on
certain solemn occasions Roman generals and magistrates personated the
supreme god, and that in so doing they revived the practice of the early
kings. To us moderns, for whom the breach which divides the human and
the divine has deepened into an impassable gulf, such mimicry may appear
impious, but it was otherwise with the ancients. To their thinking gods
and men were akin, for many families traced their descent from a
divinity, and the deification of a man probably seemed as little
extraordinary to them as the canonisation of a saint seems to a modern
Catholic. The Romans in particular were quite familiar with the
spectacle of men masquerading as spirits; for at the funerals of great
houses all the illustrious dead of the family were personated by men
specially chosen for their resemblance to the departed. These
representatives wore [Sidenote: Roman custom of representing dead
ancestors by masked men.] masks fashioned and painted in the likeness of
the originals: they were dressed in rich robes of office, resplendent
with purple and gold, such as the dead nobles had worn in their
lifetime: like them, they rode in chariots through the city preceded by
the rods and axes, and attended by all the pomp and heraldry of high
station; and when at last the funeral procession, after threading its
way through the crowded streets, defiled into the Forum, the maskers
solemnly took their seats on ivory chairs placed for them on the
platform of the Rostra, in the sight of the people, recalling no doubt
to the old, by their silent presence, the memories of an illustrious
past, and firing the young with the ambition of a glorious future.[570]
[Sidenote: The kings of Alba seem also to have claimed to represent
Jupiter.] According to a tradition which we have no reason to reject,
Rome was founded by settlers from Alba Longa, a city situated on the
slope of the Alban hills, overlooking the lake and the Campagna.[571]
Hence if the Roman kings claimed to be representatives or embodiments of
Jupiter, the god of the sky, of the thunder, and of the oak, it is
natural to suppose that the kings of Alba, from whom the founder of Rome
traced his descent, may have set up the same claim before them. Now the
Alban dynasty bore the name of Silvii or Wood, and it can hardly be
without significance that in the vision of the historic glories of Rome
revealed to Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as well as a
poet, should represent all the line of Silvii as crowned [Sidenote: The
Silvii and the Julii.] with oak.[572] A chaplet of oak leaves would thus
seem to have been part of the insignia of the old kings of Alba Longa as
of their successors the kings of Rome; in both cases it marked the
monarch as the human representative of the oak-god. With regard to
Silvius, the first king of the Alban dynasty, we are told that he got
his name because he had been born or brought up in the forest, and that
when he came to man’s estate he contested the kingdom with his kinsman
Julus, whose name, as some of the ancients themselves [Sidenote: Julus,
the little Jupiter.] perceived, means the Little Jupiter. The people
decided in favour of Silvius, but his rival Julus was consoled for the
loss of the crown by being invested with religious authority and the
office of chief pontiff, or perhaps rather of Flamen Dialis, the highest
dignity after the kingship. From this Julus or Little Jupiter, the noble
house of the Julii, and hence the first emperors of Rome, believed
themselves to be sprung.[573] The legend of the dispute between Silvius
and Julus may preserve a reminiscence of such a partition of spiritual
and temporal powers in Alba Longa as afterwards took place in Rome, when
the old regal office was divided between the Consuls and the King of the
Sacred Rites.[574] Many more instances of such a schism will meet us
later on. That the Julian house worshipped Vejovis, the Little Jupiter,
according to the ancient rites of Alba Longa, is proved by the
inscription on an altar which they dedicated to him at their ancestral
home of Bovillae, a colony of Alba Longa, situated at the foot of the
Alban hills.[575] The Caesars, the most illustrious family of the Julian
house, took their name from their long hair (_caesaries_),[576] which
was probably in those early days, as it was among the Franks long
afterwards, a symbol of royalty.[577]
[Sidenote: The Alban kings seem to have been expected to make thunder
and rain for the good of their subjects.] But in ceding the pontificate
to their rivals, it would seem that the reigning dynasty of the Silvii
or Woods by no means renounced their own claim to personate the god of
the oak and the thunder; for the Roman annals record that one of them,
Romulus, Remulus, or Amulius Silvius by name, set up for being a god in
his own person, the equal or superior of Jupiter. To support his
pretensions and overawe his subjects, he constructed machines whereby he
mimicked the clap of thunder and the flash of lightning. Diodorus
relates that in the season of fruitage, when thunder is loud and
frequent, the king commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of heaven’s
artillery by clashing their swords against their shields. But he paid
the penalty of his impiety, for he perished, he and his house, struck by
a thunderbolt in the midst of a dreadful storm. Swollen by the rain, the
Alban lake rose in flood and drowned his palace. But still, says an
ancient historian, when the water is low and the surface unruffled by a
breeze, you may see the ruins of the palace at the bottom of the clear
lake.[578] Taken along with the similar story of Salmoneus, king of
Elis,[579] this legend points to a real custom observed by the early
kings of Greece and Italy, who like their fellows in Africa down to
modern times may have been expected to produce rain and thunder for the
good of the crops.[580] The priestly king Numa passed for an adept in
the art of drawing down lightning from the sky.[581] Mock thunder, we
know, has been made by various peoples as a rain-charm in modern
times;[582] why should it not have been made by kings in antiquity?
[Sidenote: The legends of the deaths of Roman kings point to a close
connexion between the king and the thunder-god.] In this connexion it
deserves to be noted that, according to the legend, Salmoneus, like his
Alban counterpart, was killed by a thunderbolt; and that one of the
Roman kings, Tullus Hostilius, is reported to have met with the same end
in an attempt to draw down Jupiter in the form of lightning from the
sky.[583] Aeneas himself, the legendary ancestor both of the Alban and
the Roman kings, vanished from the world in a violent thunderstorm, and
was afterwards worshipped as Jupiter Indiges. A mound of earth,
encircled with fine trees, on the bank of the little river Numicius was
pointed out as his grave.[584] Romulus, too, the first king of Rome,
[Sidenote: Death and deification of Romulus.] disappeared in like
manner. It was the seventh of July, and the king was reviewing his army
at the Goat’s Marsh, outside the walls of the city. Suddenly the sky
lowered and a tempest burst, accompanied by peals of thunder. Soon the
storm had swept by, leaving the brightness and serenity of the summer
day behind. But Romulus was never seen again. Those who had stood by him
said they saw him caught up to heaven in a whirlwind; and not long
afterwards a certain Proculus Julius, a patrician of Alban birth and
descent, declared on oath that Romulus had appeared to him clad in
bright armour, and announced that the Romans were to worship him as a
god under the name of Quirinus, and to build him a temple on the spot.
The temple was built and the place was henceforth known as the Quirinal
hill.[585] In this legend it is significant that the annunciation of the
king’s divinity should be put in the mouth of a member of the Julian
house, a native of Alba; for we have seen reason to believe that at Alba
the Julii had competed with the Silvii, from whom Romulus was descended,
for the kingship, and with it for the honour of personating Jupiter. If,
as seems to be philologically possible, the word Quirinus is derived
from the same root as _quercus_, “an oak,” the name of the deified
Romulus would mean no more than “the oak-god,” that is, Jupiter.[586]
Thus the tradition would square perfectly with the other indications of
custom and legend which have led us to conclude that the kings both of
Rome and of Alba claimed to embody in their own persons the god of the
sky, of thunder, and of the oak. Certainly the stories which associated
the deaths of so many of them with thunderstorms point to a close
connexion with the god of thunder and lightning. A king who had been
wont to fulminate in his lifetime might naturally be supposed at death
to be carried up in a thunderstorm to heaven, there to discharge above
the clouds the same duties which he had performed on earth. Such a tale
would be all the more likely to attach itself to the twin Romulus, if
the early Romans shared the widespread superstition that twins have
power over the weather in general and over rain and wind in
particular.[587] That tempests are caused by the spirits of the dead is
a belief of the Araucanians of Chili. Not a storm bursts upon the Andes
or the ocean which these Indians do not ascribe to a battle between the
souls of their fellow-countrymen and the dead Spaniards. In the roaring
of the wind they hear the trampling of the ghostly horses, in the peal
of the thunder the roll of the drums, and in the flashes of lightning
the fire of the artillery.[588]
[Sidenote: Every Latin town probably had its local Jupiter.] Thus, if
the kings of Alba and Rome imitated Jupiter as god of the oak by wearing
a crown of oak leaves, they seem also to have copied him in his
character of a weather-god by pretending to make thunder and lightning.
And if they did so, it is probable that, like Jupiter in heaven and many
kings on earth, they also acted as public rain-makers, wringing showers
from the dark sky by their enchantments whenever the parched earth cried
out for the refreshing moisture. At Rome the sluices of heaven were
opened by means of a sacred stone, and the ceremony appears to have
formed part of the ritual of Jupiter Elicius, the god who elicits from
the clouds the flashing lightning and the dripping rain.[589] And who so
well fitted to perform the ceremony as the king, the living
representative of the sky-god?
[Sidenote: Many local Jupiters in Latium.] The conclusion which we have
reached as to the kings of Rome and Alba probably holds good of all the
kings of ancient Latium: each of them, we may suppose, represented or
embodied the local Jupiter. For we can hardly doubt that of old every
Latin town or settlement had its own Jupiter, as every town and almost
every church in modern Italy has its own Madonna; and like the Baal of
the Semites the local Jupiter was commonly worshipped on high places.
Wooded heights, round which the rain-clouds gather, were indeed the
natural sanctuaries for a god of the sky, the rain, and the oak. At Rome
he occupied one summit of the Capitoline hill, while the other summit
was assigned to his wife Juno, whose temple, with the long flight
[Sidenote: Capitoline Jupiter and Juno.] of stairs leading up to it, has
for ages been appropriately replaced by the church of St. Mary “in the
altar of the sky” (_in Araceli_).[590] That both heights were originally
wooded seems certain, for down to imperial times the saddle which joins
them was known as the place “between the two groves.”[591] Virgil tells
us that the hilltop where gilded temples glittered in his day had been
covered of old by shaggy thickets, the haunt of woodland elves and
savage men, “born of the tree-trunks and the heart of oak.”[592] These
thickets were probably composed of oaks, for the oak crown [Sidenote:
The hills of Rome once wooded with oaks.] was sacred to Capitoline Juno
as well as to Jupiter;[593] it was to a sacred oak on the Capitol that
Romulus fastened the spoils,[594] and there is evidence that in early
times oak-woods clothed other of the hills on which Rome was afterwards
built. Thus the Caelian hill went originally by the name of the Mountain
of the Oak Grove on account of the thickets of oak by which it was
overgrown,[595] and Jupiter was here worshipped in his character of the
oak-god;[596] one of the old gates of Rome, apparently between the
Caelian and the Esquiline hills, was called the Gate of the Oak Grove
for a similar reason;[597] and within the walls hard by was a Chapel of
the Oak Grove dedicated to the worship of the oak-nymphs.[598] These
nymphs appear on coins of the Accoleian family as three women supporting
on their shoulders a pole from which rise leafy branches.[599] The
Esquiline hill seems also to have derived its name from its oaks. After
mentioning the Chapel of the Oak and other hallowed groves which still
dotted the hill in his time, the antiquary Varro tells us that their
bounds were now much curtailed, adding with a sigh that it was no wonder
the sacred old trees should give way to the modern worship of
Mammon.[600] Apparently the Roman nobles of those days sold the ancient
woods, as their descendants sell their beautiful gardens, for
building-land. To this list of oak-clad hills on the left bank of the
Tiber must be added the Quirinal, if Quirinus, who had a very ancient
shrine on the hill, was the oak-god.[601] Under the Aventine was a grove
of evergreen oaks,[602] which appears to have been no other than the
grove of Egeria outside the Porta Capena.[603] The old grove of Vesta,
which once skirted the foot of the Palatine hill on the side of the
Forum,[604] must surely have been a grove of oaks; for not only does an
oak appear growing beside the temple of Vesta on a fine relief preserved
in the gallery of the Uffizi at Florence, but [Sidenote: The sacred
Vestal fire fed with oak-wood.] charred embers of the sacred Vestal fire
have in recent years been discovered at the temple of Vesta in the
Forum, and a microscopic analysis of them has proved that they consist
of the pith or heart of trunks or great branches of oak
(_quercus_).[605] The full significance of this discovery will appear
later on. When the plebeians seceded to the Janiculum in the third
century before Christ, the dictator Q. Hortensius summoned a meeting of
the people and passed a law in an oak grove, which perhaps grew on the
hill.[606] In this neighbourhood there was a street called the Street of
the Oak Grove; it is mentioned in an inscription found in its original
position near the modern Garibaldi bridge.[607] On the Vatican hill
there stood an evergreen oak which was believed to be older than Rome;
an inscription in Etruscan letters on a bronze tablet proclaimed the
sanctity of the tree.[608] Finally, that oak woods existed at or near
Rome in the earliest times has lately been demonstrated by the discovery
in the Forum itself of a prehistoric cemetery, which contains amongst
other sepultures the bones of several young children deposited in rudely
hollowed trunks of oak.[609] With all this evidence before us we need
not wonder that Virgil should speak of the primitive inhabitants of Rome
as “born of the tree-trunks and the heart of oak,” and that the Roman
kings should have worn crowns of oak leaves in imitation of the oak-god
Jupiter, who dwelt in his sacred grove on the Capitol.
[Sidenote: The Alban kings may have imitated Latian Jupiter, who dwelt
on the top of the Alban Mount.] If the kings of Rome aped Capitoline
Jove, their predecessors the kings of Alba probably laid themselves out
to mimic the great Latian Jupiter, who had his seat above the city on
the summit of the Alban Mountain. Latinus, the legendary ancestor of the
dynasty, was said to have been changed into Latian Jupiter after
vanishing from the world in the mysterious fashion characteristic of the
old Latin kings.[610] The sanctuary of the god on the top of the
mountain was the religious centre of the Latin League, as Alba was its
political capital till Rome wrested the supremacy from its ancient
rival. Apparently no temple, in our sense of the word, was ever erected
to Jupiter on this his holy mountain; as god of the sky and thunder he
appropriately received the homage of his worshippers in the open air.
The massive wall, of which some remains still enclose the old garden of
the Passionist monastery, seems to have been part of the sacred precinct
which Tarquin the Proud, the last king of Rome, marked out for the
solemn annual assembly of the Latin League.[611] The god’s oldest
sanctuary on this airy mountain-top was a grove;[612] and bearing in
mind not merely the special consecration of the oak to Jupiter, but also
the traditional oak crown of the Alban kings and the analogy of the
Capitoline Jupiter at Rome, we may suppose that the trees in the grove
were oaks.[613] We know that in antiquity Mount Algidus, an outlying
group of the Alban hills, was covered with dark forests of oak;[614] and
among the tribes who belonged to the Latin League in the earliest days,
and were entitled to share the flesh of the white bull sacrificed on the
Alban Mount, there was one whose members styled themselves the Men of
the Oak,[615] doubtless on account of the woods among which they dwelt.
[Sidenote: Theophrastus’s description of the woods of Latium.] But we
should err if we pictured to ourselves the country as covered in
historical times with an unbroken forest of oaks. Theophrastus has left
us a description of the woods of Latium as they were in the fourth
century before Christ. He says: “The land of the Latins is all moist.
The plains produce laurels, myrtles, and wonderful beeches; for they
fell trees of such a size that a single stem suffices for the keel of a
Tyrrhenian ship. Pines and firs grow in the mountains. What they call
the land of Circe is a lofty headland thickly wooded with oak, myrtle,
and luxuriant laurels. The natives say that Circe dwelt there, and they
shew the grave of Elpenor, from which grow myrtles such as wreaths are
made of, whereas the other myrtle-trees are tall.”[616] Thus the
prospect from the top [Sidenote: The prospect from the Alban Mount in
antiquity.] of the Alban Mount in the early days of Rome must have been
very different in some respects from what it is to-day. The purple
Apennines, indeed, in their eternal calm on the one hand, and the
shining Mediterranean in its eternal unrest on the other, no doubt
looked then much as they look now, whether bathed in sunshine, or
chequered by the fleeting shadows of clouds; but instead of the desolate
brown expanse of the fever-stricken Campagna, spanned by its long lines
of ruined aqueducts, like the broken arches of the bridge in the vision
of Mirza, the eye must have ranged over woodlands that stretched away,
mile after mile, on all sides, till their varied hues of green or
autumnal scarlet and gold melted insensibly into the blue of the distant
mountains and sea.
Thus the Alban Mount was to the Latins what Olympus was to the Greeks,
the lofty abode of the sky-god, who hurled his thunderbolts from above
the clouds. The white steers which were here sacrificed to him in his
sacred grove, as in the Capitol at Rome,[617] remind us of the white
bulls which the Druids of Gaul sacrificed under the holy oak when
[Sidenote: Resemblance between the Latin worship of Jupiter and the
Druidical worship of the oak.] they cut the mistletoe;[618] and the
parallel would be all the closer if, as we have seen reason to think,
the Latins worshipped Jupiter originally in groves of oak. Other
resemblances between ancient Gaul and Latium will meet us later on. When
we remember that the ancient Italian and Celtic peoples spoke languages
which are nearly related to each other,[619] we shall not be surprised
at discovering traces of community in their religion, especially in what
concerns the worship of the god of the oak and the thunder. For that
worship, as we shall see presently, belongs to the oldest stratum of
Aryan civilisation in Europe.
[Sidenote: Sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno.] But Jupiter did not
reign alone on the top of his holy mountain. He had his consort with
him, the goddess Juno, who was worshipped here under the same title,
Moneta, as on the Capitol at Rome.[620] As the oak crown was sacred to
Jupiter and Juno on the Capitol,[621] so we may suppose it was on the
Alban Mount, from which the Capitoline worship was derived. Thus the
oak-god would have his oak-goddess in the sacred oak grove. So at Dodona
the oak-god Zeus was coupled with Dione, whose very name is only a
dialectically different form of Juno;[622] and so on the top of Mount
Cithaeron he was periodically wedded to an oaken image of Hera.[623] It
is probable, though it cannot be positively proved, that the sacred
marriage of Jupiter and Juno was annually celebrated by all the peoples
of the Latin stock in the month which they named after the goddess, the
midsummer month of June.[624] Now on the first of June the Roman
pontiffs performed certain rites in the grove of Helernus beside the
Tiber, and on the same day, and perhaps in the same place, a nymph of
the grove, by name Carna, received offerings of lard and bean-porridge.
She was said to be a huntress, chaste and coy, who gave [Sidenote: Janus
and Carna.] the slip to her lovers in the depths of the wood, but was
caught by Janus. Some took her to be Diana herself.[625] If she were
indeed a form of that goddess, her union with Janus, that is, Dianus,
would be appropriate; and as she had a chapel on the Caelian hill, which
was once covered with oak-woods,[626] she may have been, like Egeria, an
oak-nymph. Further, Janus, or Dianus, and Diana, as we shall see later
on, were originally mere doubles of Jupiter and Juno, with whom they
coincide in name and to some extent in function. Hence it appears to be
not impossible that the rite celebrated by the pontiffs on the first of
June in the sacred grove of Helernus was the marriage of Jupiter and
Juno under the forms of Janus and Diana. It would be some confirmation
of this view if we could be sure that, as Ovid seems to imply, the
Romans were in the habit of placing branches of white thorn or buckthorn
in their [Sidenote: Ancient use of white thorn or buckthorn to ward off
witchcraft.] windows on the first of June to keep out the witches;[627]
for in some parts of Europe precisely the same custom is observed, for
the same reason, a month earlier, on the marriage day of the King and
Queen of May.[628] The Greeks certainly believed that branches of white
thorn or buckthorn fastened to a door or outside the house had power to
disarm the malignant arts of sorcerers[629] and to exclude spirits.
Hence they hung up branches of it before the door when sacrifices were
being offered to the dead, lest any of the prowling ghosts should be
tempted to revisit their old homes or to invade those of other
people.[630] When the atheist Bion lay adying, he not only caused
sacrifices to be offered on his behalf to the gods whose existence he
had denied, but got an old hag to mumble incantations over him and to
bind magical thongs about his arms, and he had boughs of buckthorn and
laurel attached to the lintel to keep out death.[631] However, the
evidence as to the rites observed by the Romans on the first of June is
too slight and dubious to allow us to press the parallel with May Day.
[Sidenote: At the sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno in later times the
parts of the deities may have been acted by the Flamen Dialis and the
Flaminica.] If at any time of the year the Romans celebrated the sacred
marriage of Jupiter and Juno, as the Greeks commonly celebrated the
corresponding marriage of Zeus and Hera,[632] we may suppose that under
the Republic the ceremony was either performed over images of the divine
pair or acted by the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica. For the
Flamen Dialis was the priest of Jove; indeed, ancient and modern writers
have regarded him, with much probability, as a living image of Jupiter,
a human embodiment of the sky-god.[633] In earlier times the Roman king,
as representative of Jupiter, would naturally play the part of the
heavenly bridegroom at the sacred marriage, while his queen would figure
as the heavenly bride, just as in Egypt [Sidenote: The Flamen and
Flaminica may have been the deputies of the king and queen.] the king
and queen masqueraded in the character of deities, and as at Athens the
queen annually wedded the vine-god Dionysus. That the Roman king and
queen should act the parts of Jupiter and Juno would seem all the more
natural because these deities themselves bore the title of King and
Queen.[634] Even if the office of Flamen Dialis existed under the kings,
as it appears to have done, the double representation of Jupiter by the
king and the flamen need not have seemed extraordinary to the Romans of
the time. The same sort of duplication, as we saw, appears to have taken
place at Alba, when the Julii were allowed to represent the supreme god
in the character of Little Jupiters, while the royal dynasty of the
Silvii continued to wield the divine thunder and lightning.[635] And
long ages afterwards, history repeating itself, another member of the
Julian house, the first emperor of Rome, was deified in his lifetime
under the title of Jupiter, while a flamen was appointed to do for him
what the Flamen Dialis did for the heavenly Jove.[636] It is said that
Numa, the typical priestly king, at first himself discharged the
functions of Flamen Dialis, but afterwards appointed a separate priest
of Jupiter with that title, in order that the kings, untrammeled by the
burdensome religious observances attached to the priesthood, might be
free to lead their armies to battle.[637] The tradition may be
substantially correct; for analogy shews that the functions of a
priestly king are too harassing and too incongruous to be permanently
united in the same hands, and that sooner or later the holder of the
office seeks to rid himself of part of his burden by deputing to others,
according to his temper and tastes, either his civil or his religious
duties. Hence we may take it as probable that the fighting kings of
Rome, tired of parading as Jupiter and of observing all the elaborate
ritual, all the tedious restrictions which the character of godhead
entailed on them, were glad to relegate these pious mummeries to a
substitute, in whose hands they left the crosier at home while they went
forth to wield the sharp Roman sword abroad. This would explain why the
traditions of the later kings, from Tullus Hostilius onwards, exhibit so
few traces of sacred or priestly functions adhering to their office.
Among the ceremonies which they henceforward performed by deputy may
have been the rite of the sacred marriage.
[Sidenote: At the sacred marriage the King and Queen of Rome probably
personated the god and goddess of the oak.] Whether that was so or not,
the legend of Numa and Egeria appears to embody a reminiscence of a time
when the priestly king himself played the part of the divine bridegroom;
and as we have seen reason to suppose that the Roman kings personated
the oak-god, while Egeria is expressly said to have been an oak-nymph,
the story of their union in the sacred grove raises a presumption that
at Rome in the regal period a ceremony was periodically performed
exactly analogous to that which was annually celebrated at Athens down
to the time of Aristotle.[638] The marriage of the King of Rome to the
oak-goddess, like the wedding of the vine-god to the Queen of Athens,
must have been intended to quicken the growth of vegetation by
homoeopathic magic. Of the two forms of the rite we can hardly doubt
that the Roman was the older, and that long before the northern invaders
met with the vine on the shores of the Mediterranean their forefathers
had married the tree-god to the tree-goddess in the vast oak forests of
Central and Northern Europe. In the England of our day the forests have
mostly disappeared, yet still on many a village green and in many a
country lane a faded image of the sacred marriage lingers in the rustic
pageantry of May Day.
Footnote 540:
See above, vol. i. pp. 17 _sq._
Footnote 541:
See above, vol. i. p. 12.
Footnote 542:
Catullus, xxxiv. 9 _sqq_.
Footnote 543:
Wernicke, in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encyklopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft_, ii. coll. 1343, 1351.
Footnote 544:
Plutarch, _De fortuna Romanorum_, 9. This statement would be strongly
confirmed by etymology if we could be sure that, as Mr. A. B. Cook has
suggested, the name Egeria is derived from a root _aeg_ meaning “oak.”
The name is spelt _Aegeria_ by Valerius Maximus (i. 2. 1). See A. B.
Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xviii. (1904)
p. 366; _id_. “The European Sky-God,” _Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905) pp. 283
_sq._; and as to the root _aeg_ see O. Schrader, _Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Atertumskunde_ (Strasburg, 1901), p. 164.
Footnote 545:
Festus, _s.v._ “Querquetulanae,” pp. 260, 261, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 546:
See below, p. 380.
Footnote 547:
Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ iii. 466.
Footnote 548:
Tacitus, _Annals_, ii. 54; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ ii. 232; Pausanias, ix.
2. 11, x. 24. 7; Lucian, _Bis accusatus_, 1.
Footnote 549:
See above, vol. i. p. 18.
Footnote 550:
See above, pp. 130 _sqq._
Footnote 551:
The first, I believe, to point out a parallelism in detail between
Rome and Aricia was Mr. A. B. Cook (_Classical Review_, xvii. (1902)
pp. 376 _sqq._); but from the similarity he inferred the humanity of
the Arician priests rather than the divinity of the Roman kings. A
fuller consideration of all the evidence has since led him, rightly as
I conceive, to reverse the inference. See his articles “Zeus, Jupiter,
and the Oak,” _The Classical Review_, xviii. (1904) pp. 360-375; “The
European Sky-God,” _Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905) pp. 260-332. In the first
and second editions of this work I had suggested that the _regifugium_
at Rome may have been a relic of a rule of succession to the throne
like that which obtained at Nemi. The following discussion of the
religious position of the old Latin kings owes much to Mr. Cook’s
sagacity and learning, of which he freely imparted to me.
Footnote 552:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ iii. 61 _sq._, iv. 74, v.
35; B. G. Niebuhr, _History of Rome_, ii. 36; Th. Mommsen, _History of
Rome_, New Edition (London, 1894), i. 83; A. J. H. Greenidge, _Roman
Public Life_ (London, 1901), pp. 44 _sq._ But Mommsen, while he held
that the costume of a Roman god and of the Roman king was the same,
denied that the king personated the god. A truer historical insight is
displayed by K. O. Müller in his treatment of the subject (_Die
Etrusker_, Stuttgart, 1877, i. 348 _sq._). For a discussion of the
evidence see Th. Mommsen, _Römisches Staatsrecht_, 3rd Ed., i. 372
_sq._, ii. 5 _sq._; J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, ii. 566
_sq._, iii. 2nd Ed., 507 _sq._; _id._, _Privatleben der Römer_, 2nd
Ed., 542 _sq._; K. O. Müller, _op. cit._ i. 344-350, ii. 198-200;
Aust, _s.v._ “Juppiter,” in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon der griech. u.
röm. Mythologie_, ii. coll. 633, 725-728. Among the chief passages of
ancient authors on the subject are Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_ll.cc._; Strabo, v. 2. 2, p. 220; Diodorus Siculus, v. 40; Appian,
_Pun._ 66; Zonaras, _Annal._ vii. 8 and 21; Livy, i. 8. 1 _sq._, v.
23. 4 _sq._, v. 41. 2, x. 7. 9 _sq._; Florus, i. 5. 6; Pliny, _Nat.
Hist._ viii. 195, xv. 127, 130, 137, xxxiii. 11. 111 _sq._; Juvenal,
x. 36-43; Ovid, _Ex Ponto_, ii. 57 _sq._; Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 6.
7-9; Servius on Virgil, _Ecl._ vi. 22, x. 27; Ael. Lampridius,
_Alexander Severus_, 40. 8; Jul. Capitolinus, _Gordiani tres_, 4. 4;
Aulus Gellius, v. 6. 5-7; Tertullian, _De corona militis_, 13. The
fullest descriptions of a Roman triumph are those of Appian and
Zonaras (vii. 21).
Footnote 553:
Camillus triumphed in a chariot drawn by white horses like the sacred
white horses of Jupiter and the Sun. His Republican contemporaries
were offended at what they regarded as a too close imitation of the
gods (Livy, v. 23. 5 _sq._; Plutarch, _Camillus_, 7; Dio Cassius, lii.
13); but the Roman emperors followed his example, or perhaps revived
the old custom of the kings. See Dio Cassius, xliii. 14; Suetonius,
_Nero_, 25; Pliny, _Panegyric_, 22; Propertius, v. 1. 32; Ovid, _Ars
amat._ i. 214. On the sanctity of white horses among various branches
of the Aryan stock, see J. von Negelein, “Die volksthümliche Bedeutung
der weissen Farbe,” _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, xxxiii. (1901) pp.
62-66; W. Ridgeway, _The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred
Horse_ (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 105, 186, 187, 294, 295, 419. As to the
horses of the Sun, see above, vol. i. pp. 315 _sq._
Footnote 554:
Tertullian, _De corona militis_, 13, “_Coronant et publicos ordines
laureis publicae causae magistratus vero insuper aureis. Praeferuntur
etiam illis Hetruscae. Hoc vocabulum est coronarum, quas gemmis et
foliis ex auro quercinis ob Jovem insignes ad deducendas thensas cum
palmatis togis sumunt._” The _thensae_ were the sacred cars in which
the images of the gods were carried at the procession of the
Circensian games (see W. Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities_, 3rd Ed., _s.v._). That the Etruscan crown described by
Tertullian was the golden crown held by a slave over the head of a
general on his triumph may be inferred from Pliny, _Nat. Hist._
xxxiii. 11, “_Vulgoque sic triumphabant, et cum corona ex auro Etrusca
sustineretur a tergo, anulus tamen in digito ferreus erat aeque
triumphantis et servi fortasse coronam sustinentis._” Compare Zonaras,
_Annal._ vii. 21; Juvenal, x. 38 _sqq._ Mommsen says that the
triumphal golden crown was made in the shape of laurel leaves
(_Römisches Staatsrecht_, i. 3rd Ed., 427); but none of the ancient
authors cited by him appears to affirm this, with the exception of
Aulus Gellius (v. 6. 5-7, “_Triumphales coronae sunt aureae, quae
imperatoribus ob honorem triumphi mittuntur. Id vulgo dicitur aurum
coronarium. Haec antiquitus e lauru erant, post fieri ex aura
coeptae_”). Gellius may have confused the wreath of real laurel which
the general wore on his head (Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxiii. 127, 130,
137) with the golden crown which was held over him by a slave. The two
crowns are clearly distinguished by Zonaras (_l.c._), though he does
not describe the shape of the golden crown. Thus there is no good
ground for rejecting the express testimony of Tertullian that the
golden crown was shaped like oak-leaves. This seems to have been
Mommsen’s own earlier opinion, since he mentions “a chaplet of oaken
leaves in gold” as part of the insignia of the Roman kings (_Roman
History_, London, 1894, i. 83).
Footnote 555:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxiii. 111 _sq._; Servius on Virgil, _Ecl._ vi.
22, x. 27.
Footnote 556:
Pausanias, ii. 2. 6, vii. 26. 11, viii. 39. 6. For other examples of
idols painted red see my note on Pausanias, ii. 2. 6.
Footnote 557:
For instances see Fr. Kunstmann, “Valentin Ferdinand’s Beschreibung
der Serra Leoa,” _Abhandlungen d. histor. Classe d. kön. Bayer.
Akademie d. Wissenschaften_, ix. (Munich, 1866) p. 131; J. B. Labat,
_Relation historique de l’Éthiopie Occidentale_ (Paris, 1732), i. 250;
Gmelin, _Reise durch Sibirien_, ii. 476; “Ueber den religiösen Glauben
und die Ceremonien der heidnischen Samojeden im Kreise Mesen,”
_Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, N.F. viii. (1860) p. 59; E.
Rae, _The White Sea Peninsula_, p. 150; J. B. Müller, “Les Mœurs et
usages des Ostiackes,” _Recueil de voiages au Nord_, viii. (Amsterdam,
1727) pp. 414 _sq._; Delamare, in _Annales de la Propagation de la
Foi_, xii. (1840) p. 482; Sahagun, _Histoire générale des choses de la
Nouvelle-Espagne_ (Paris, 1880), p. 185; J. de Velasco, _Histoire du
royaume de Quito_, p. 121 (Ternaux-Compans, _Voyages, relations et
mémoires_, xviii., Paris, 1840); E. J. Payne, _History of the New
World called America_, i. 374 n. 1; F. B. Jevons, _Introduction to the
History of Religion_ (London, 1896), p. 158. Often we are merely told
that the blood is smeared or sprinkled on the image. See A. B. Ellis,
_Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, pp. 42, 79; _id._,
_Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, pp. 102, 106; A. F.
Mockler-Ferryman, _British Nigeria_ (London, 1902), p. 255; Fr.
Kramer, “Der Götzendienst der Niasser,” _Tijdschrift voor Indische
Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxxiii. (1890) p. 496. For more examples
see my note on Pausanias, ii. 2. 6.
Footnote 558:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xii. 3; Phaedrus, iii. 17. 1 _sqq._; Servius on
Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 332, and on _Ecl._ i. 17.
Footnote 559:
Livy, i. 10. 4 _sqq._
Footnote 560:
Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 92.
Footnote 561:
Ovid, _Tristia_, iii. 31 _sqq._
Footnote 562:
Dio Cassius, liii. 19.
Footnote 563:
Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 607 _sqq._, iv. 953 _sq._ Tiberius refused a similar
honour (Suetonius, _Tiberius_, 26); but Domitian seems to have
accepted it (Martial, viii. 82. 7). Two statues of Claudius, one in
the Vatican, the other in the Lateran Museum, represent the emperor as
Jupiter wearing the oak crown (W. Helbig, _Führer durch die
öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom_, 2nd Ed., i.
Nos. 312, 673).
Footnote 564:
_Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, viii. No. 6981.
Footnote 565:
J. Overbeck, _Griechische Kunstmythologie_, Besonderer Theil, i. 232
_sqq._; L. R. Farnell, _The Cults of the Greek States_, i. 107 _sq._
Footnote 566:
See above, vol. i. p. 310.
Footnote 567:
Antoninus Liberalis, _Transform._ 6. For this and the two following
passages of Tzetzes I am indebted to Mr. A. B. Cook. See further his
articles, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xvii.
(1903) p. 409; “The European Sky-god,” _Folk-lore_, xv. (1904) pp. 299
_sqq._
Footnote 568:
H. Ebeling, _Lexicon Homericum_, _s.vv._ βασιλεύς, διοτρεφής, and
θεῖος.
Footnote 569:
J. Tzetzes, _Antehomerica_, 102 _sq._:
οἱ πρὶν γάρ τε Δίας πάντας κάλεον βασιλῆας,
οὕνεκά μιν καλὸς Διὸς ἀστὴρ σκῆπτρον ὀπάζει.
_id._, _Chiliades_, i. 474:
τοὺς βασιλεῖς δ’ ἀνέκαθε Δίας ἐκάλουν πάντας.
Footnote 570:
Polybius, vi. 53 _sq._
Footnote 571:
As to the situation, see Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ i. 66;
H. Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, ii. 582 _sq._
Footnote 572:
Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 772. I have to thank Mr. A. B. Cook for directing
my attention to the Alban kings and their interesting legends. See his
articles “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xviii.
(1904) pp. 363 _sq._; “The European Sky-god,” _Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905)
pp. 285 _sqq._
Footnote 573:
Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 760 _sqq._, with the commentary of Servius; Livy,
i. 3. 6 _sqq._; Ovid, _Metam._ xiv. 609 _sqq._; _id._, _Fasti_, iv. 39
_sqq._; Festus, _s.v._ “Silvi,” p. 340, ed. C. O. Müller; Aurelius
Victor, _Origo gentis Romanae_, 15-17; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ i. 70; Diodorus Siculus, in Eusebius, _Chronic._ i.
coll. 285, 287, ed. A. Schoene; Diodorus Siculus, vii. 3a and 3b, vol.
ii. pp. 110-112, ed. L. Dindorf (Teubner edition); Joannes Lydus, _De
magistratibus_, i. 21. As to the derivation of the name Julus, see
Aurelius Victor, _op. cit._ 15, “_Igitur Latini Ascanium ob insignem
virtutem non solum Jove ortum crediderunt, sed etiam per diminutionem,
declinato paululum nomine, primo Jobum, dein postea Julum
appellarant_”; also Steuding, in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon d. griech.
u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. 574. Compare W. M. Lindsay, _The Latin
Language_ (Oxford, 1894), p. 250. According to Diodorus, the
priesthood bestowed on Julus was the pontificate; but the name Julus
or Little Jupiter suggests that the office was rather that of Flamen
Dialis, who was a sort of living embodiment of Jupiter (see below, pp.
191 _sq._), and whose name of _Dialis_ is derived from the same root
as Julus. On the Julii and their relation to Vejovis see R. H.
Klausen, _Aeneas und die Penaten_, ii. 1059 _sqq._
Footnote 574:
See above, p. 1, and vol. i. p. 44.
Footnote 575:
_Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, xiv. No. 2387; L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 263 _sq._ On Vejovis as the Little Jupiter
see Festus, _s.v._ “Vesculi,” p. 379, “_Ve enim syllabam rei parvae
praeponebant, unde Veiovem parvum Iovem et vegrandem fabam minutam
dicebant_”; also Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 429-448. At Rome the sanctuary of
Vejovis was on the saddle between the two peaks of the Capitoline hill
(Aulus Gellius, v. 12. 1 _sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 429 _sq._); thus
he appropriately dwelt on the same hill as the Great Jupiter, but
lower down the slope. On coins of the Gargilian, Ogulnian and
Vergilian houses Vejovis is represented by a youthful beardless head,
crowned with oak. See E. Babelon, _Monnaies de la République Romaine_,
i. 532, ii. 266, 529. On other Republican coins his head is crowned
with laurel. See E. Babelon, _op. cit._ i. 77, 505-508, ii. 6, 8.
Circensian games were held at Bovillae in honour of the Julian family,
and Tiberius dedicated a chapel to them there. See Tacitus, _Annals_,
ii. 41, xv. 23.
Footnote 576:
Festus, _s.v._ “Caesar,” p. 57, ed. C. O. Müller. Other but less
probable explanations of the name are suggested by Aelius Spartianus
(_Helius_, ii. 3 _sq._).
Footnote 577:
As to the Frankish kings see Agathias, _Hist._ i. 3; J. Grimm,
_Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, pp. 239 _sqq._; _The Golden Bough_,
Second Edition, i. 368 _sq._
Footnote 578:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Roman._ i. 71; Diodorus Siculus,
in Eusebius, _Chronic._ bk. i. coll. 287, 289, ed. A. Schoene;
Diodorus Siculus, vii. 3a and 4, ed. L. Dindorf; Zonaras, _Annal._
vii. 1; Aurelius Victor, _Origo gentis Romanae_, 18; Ovid, _Metam._
xiv. 616-618; _id._, _Fasti_, iv. 50; Livy, i. 3. 9. The king is
called Romulus by Livy, Remulus by Ovid, Aremulus by Aurelius Victor,
Amulius by Zonaras, Amulius or Arramulius by Diodorus, and Allodius by
Dionysius. A tale of a city submerged in the Alban lake is still
current in the neighbourhood. See the English translators’ note to
Niebuhr’s _History of Rome_, 3rd Ed., i. 200. Similar stories are told
in many lands. See my note on Pausanias, vii. 24. 6.
Footnote 579:
See above, vol. i. p. 310.
Footnote 580:
See above, vol. i. pp. 342 _sqq._
Footnote 581:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ ii. 140, xxviii. 13 _sq._ Other writers speak only
of Numa’s skill in expiating the prodigy or evil omen of thunderbolts.
See Livy, i. 20. 7; Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 285-348; Plutarch, _Numa_, 15;
Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, v. 1-4.
Footnote 582:
See above, vol. i. pp. 248, 251.
Footnote 583:
Apollodorus, i. 9. 7; Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 592 _sqq._; Pliny, _Nat.
Hist._ ii. 140, xxviii. 14 (referring to the first book of L. Piso’s
_Annals_); Livy, i. 31. 8; Aurelius Victor, _De viris illustribus_, 4;
Zonaras, _Annal._ vii. 6. According to another account Tullus
Hostilius was murdered by his successor Ancus Martius during a violent
storm (Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ iii. 35; Zonaras,
_l.c._).
Footnote 584:
Livy, i. 2. 6; Ovid, _Metam._ xiv. 598-608; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ iii.
56; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ i. 64; Servius on
Virgil, _Aen._ i. 259; Aurelius Victor, _Origo gentis Romanae_, 14.
Only the last writer mentions the thunderstorm.
Footnote 585:
Livy, i. 16; Cicero, _De legibus_, i. 1. 3; _id._, _De re publica_, i.
16. 25, ii. 10. 20; Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 475-512; Plutarch, _Romulus_,
27 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ ii. 56 and 63;
Zonaras, _Annal._ vii. 4; Aurelius Victor, _De viris illustribus_, 2;
Florus, _Epitoma_, i. 1. 16-18. From Cicero (_De legibus_, i. 1. 3) we
learn that the apparition of Romulus to Proculus Julius took place
near the spot where the house of Atticus afterwards stood, and from
Cornelius Nepos (_Atticus_, 13. 2) we know that Atticus had an
agreeable villa and shady garden on the Quirinal. As to the temple of
Quirinus see also Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 51; Festus, pp. 254,
255, ed. C. O. Müller; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xv. 120. As to the site of
the temple and the question whether it was identical with the temple
dedicated by L. Papirius Cursor in 293 B.C. (Livy, x. 46. 7; Pliny,
_Nat. Hist._ vii. 213) see O. Richter, _Topographie der Stadt Rom_,
2nd Ed., pp. 286 _sqq._; G. Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_
(Munich, 1904), pp. 144 _sqq._
Footnote 586:
See A. B. Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_,
xviii. (1904) pp. 368 _sq._; _id._ “The European Sky-god,”
_Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905) p. 281. But a serious argument against the
proposed derivation of Quirinus from _quercus_ is that, as I am
informed by my learned philological friend the Rev. Prof. J. H.
Moulton, it is inconsistent with the much more probable derivation of
Perkunas from _quercus_. See below, p. 367, note 3.
Footnote 587:
See above, vol. i. pp. 262 _sqq._
Footnote 588:
J. I. Molina, _Geographical, Natural, and Civil History of Chili_
(London, 1809), ii. 92 _sq._ The savage Conibos of the Ucayali river
in eastern Peru imagine that thunder is the voice of the dead (W.
Smyth and F. Lowe, _Journey from Lima to Para_, London, 1836, p. 240);
and among them when parents who have lost a child within three months
hear thunder, they go and dance on the grave, howling turn about (De
St. Cricq, “Voyage du Pérou au Brésil,” _Bulletin de la Société de
Géographie_, ivme série, vi., Paris, 1853, p. 294). The Yuracares of
eastern Peru threaten the thunder-god with their arrows and defy him
when he thunders (A. D’Orbigny, _L’Homme américain_, i. 365), just as
the Thracians did of old (Herodotus, iv. 94). So the Kayans of Borneo,
on hearing a peal of thunder, have been seen to grasp their swords for
the purpose of keeping off the demon who causes it (A. W. Nieuwenhuis,
_In Centraal Borneo_, i. 140 _sq._, 146 _sq._).
Footnote 589:
See above, vol. i. p. 310; and for the connexion of the rite with
Jupiter Elicius see O. Gilbert, _Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt
Rom im Altertum_, ii. 154 _sq._; Aust, in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon der
griech. und röm. Mythologie_, ii. 657 _sq._ As to the connexion of
Jupiter with the rain-making ceremony (_aquaelicium_), the combined
evidence of Petronius (_Sat._ 44) and Tertullian (_Apologeticus_, 40)
seems to me conclusive.
Footnote 590:
Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 637 _sq._, vi. 183 _sqq._; Livy, vii. 28. 4 _sq._;
Cicero, _De divinatione_, i. 45. 101; Solinus, i. 21. Although the
temple was not dedicated until 344 B.C., the worship of the goddess of
the hill appears to have been very ancient. See H. Jordan,
_Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum_, i. 2, pp. 109 _sq._; W. H.
Roscher, _Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. coll. 592 _sq._
Footnote 591:
Livy, i. 8. 5; Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 430; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ ii. 15.
Footnote 592:
Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 314-318, 347-354.
Footnote 593:
Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 92.
Footnote 594:
Livy, i. 10. 5.
Footnote 595:
_Mons Querquetulanus_; see Tacitus, _Annals_, iv. 65.
Footnote 596:
A monument found at Rome represents Jupiter beside an oak, and
underneath is the dedication: _Jovi Caelio_. See H. Dessau,
_Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 3080.
Footnote 597:
_Porta Querquetulana_ or _Querquetularia_; see Pliny, _Nat. Hist._
xvi. 37; Festus, pp. 260, 261, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 598:
Festus, _ll.cc._; Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 49.
Footnote 599:
E. Babelon, _Monnaies de la République Romaine_, i. 99 _sq._
Footnote 600:
Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 49, where, however, “_alii ab
aesculetis_” is a conjecture of C. O. Müller’s. I do not know what
authority O. Richter has for reading _aesculis consitae_ (“planted
with oaks”) for _excultae_ in this passage (_Topographie der Stadt
Rom_, 2nd Ed., p. 302, n. 4). Modern topographers prefer to derive the
name from _ex-colere_ in the sense of “the hill outside the city” (O.
Richter, _l.c._; O. Gilbert, _Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom
im Altertum_, i. 166 _sq._).
Footnote 601:
See above, p. 182.
Footnote 602:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 295 _sq._
Footnote 603:
See above, vol. i. p. 18; and for the identification, O. Gilbert,
_Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum_, ii. 152
_sqq._; A. B. Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_,
xviii. (1904) p. 366.
Footnote 604:
Cicero, _De divinatione_, i. 45, 101.
Footnote 605:
G. Boni, in _Notizie degli Scavi_, May 1900, pp. 161, 172; _id._,
_Aedes Vestae_, p. 14 (extract from the _Nuova Antologia_, 1st August
1900). Copies of these and other papers containing Commendatore Boni’s
account of his memorable excavations and discoveries were kindly given
me by him during my stay in Rome in the winter of 1900-1901. That the
fire in question was a sacrificial one is proved by the bones,
potsherds, and rude copper money found among the ashes. Commend. Boni
thinks that the charred remains of the wood prove that the fire was
extinguished, probably by libations, and that therefore it cannot have
been the perpetual holy fire of Vesta, which would have burned up
completely all the fuel. But a new fire was annually lit on the first
of March (Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 143 _sq._; Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 12.
6), which may imply that the old fire was ceremonially extinguished,
as often happens in such cases.
Footnote 606:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 37.
Footnote 607:
O. Richter, _Topographie der Stadt Rom_, 2nd Ed., p. 211.
Footnote 608:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 237. The inscription was probably not in the
Etruscan language, but only in an archaic alphabet like that employed
in the inscription on the pyramidal stone which has been found under
the Black Stone in the Forum.
Footnote 609:
G. Boni, “Bimbi Romulei,” _Nuova Antologia_, 16th February 1904, pp. 5
_sqq._ (separate reprint); E. Burton-Brown, _Recent Excavations in the
Roman Forum_ (London, 1904), p. 150.
Footnote 610:
Festus, _s.v._ “Oscillantes,” p. 194, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 611:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ iv. 49; A. Schwegler,
_Römische Geschichte_, i. 341; H. Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, ii.
580. It is to be observed that Dionysius does not here speak of the
dedication of a temple to Jupiter; when he describes the foundation of
the temple of Capitoline Jupiter by Tarquin (iv. 59 and 61) his
language is quite different. The monastery, founded in 1777 by
Cardinal York, the last of the Stuarts, has now been converted into a
meteorological station and an inn (K. Baedeker, _Central Italy and
Rome_, 13th Ed., p. 400). It is fitting enough that the atmospheric
phenomena should be observed by modern science on the spot where they
were worshipped by ancient piety.
Footnote 612:
Livy, i. 31. 3.
Footnote 613:
According to tradition, the future site of Alba Longa was marked out
by a white sow and her litter, which were found lying under evergreen
oaks (Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 43), as Mr. A. B. Cook has pointed out
(_Classical Review_, xviii. 363). The tradition seems to shew that the
neighbourhood of the city was wooded with oaks.
Footnote 614:
See below, p. 380.
Footnote 615:
Querquetulani. See Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ iii. 69; Dionysius
Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ v. 61. As to the white bulls
sacrificed at the great Latin festival and partaken of by the members
of the League, see Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, ii. 68; Dionysius
Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ iv. 49. Compare Cicero, _Pro Plancio_,
ix. 23; Varro, _De lingua Latina_, vi. 25.
Footnote 616:
Theophrastus, _Histor. plant._ v. 8. 3.
Footnote 617:
Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, ii. 68; Livy, xxii. 10. 7; Ovid, _Ex
Ponto_, iv. 4. 31; Servius on Virgil, _Georg._ ii. 146; Horace,
_Carmen Saeculare_, 49.
Footnote 618:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 250 _sq._
Footnote 619:
“Italic and Keltic are so closely bound together by important phonetic
and morphological affinities that they are sometimes spoken of as one
branch” of Aryan speech (J. H. Moulton, _Two Lectures on the Science
of Language_, Cambridge, 1903, p. 6, note). “The connection of the
Celtic and Italic languages is structural. It is much deeper than that
of Celts and Teutons, and goes back to an earlier epoch. Celts and
Latins must have dwelt together as an undivided people in the valley
of the Danube, and it must have been at a much later time—after the
Umbrians and Latins had crossed the Alps—that the contact of Celts and
Teutons came about” (Isaac Taylor, _The Origin of the Aryans_, p. 192;
compare _id._ p. 257). See also P. Giles, _Manual of Comparative
Philology_ 2nd Ed., (London, 1901), p. 26.
Footnote 620:
Livy, xlii. 7. 1, xlv. 15. 10. Compare Dio Cassius, xxxix. 20. 1. The
temple on the Alban Mount was dedicated in 168 B.C., but the worship
was doubtless far older.
Footnote 621:
See above, pp. 176, 184.
Footnote 622:
Strabo, vii. 7. 12, p. 329; Hyperides, _Or._ iii. coll. 35-37, pp. 43
_sq._, ed. Blass; G. Curtius, _Griech. Etymologie_, 5th Ed., p. 236;
W. H. Roscher, _Juno und Hera_ (Leipsic, 1875), pp. 17 _sq._; _id._,
_Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. coll. 576, 578 _sq._ See
below, p. 381.
Footnote 623:
See above, pp. 140 _sqq._
Footnote 624:
W. H. Roscher, _Juno und Hera_, pp. 64 _sqq._; _id._, _Lexikon d.
griech. u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. 575 _sq._, 591 _sqq._ At Falerii the
image of Juno was annually carried in procession from her sacred
grove, and in some respects the ceremony resembled a marriage
procession (Ovid, _Amores_, iii. 13; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ i. 21). The name of June was _Junius_ at Rome,
_Junonius_ at Aricia, Laurentum and Lavinia, and _Junonalis_ at Tibur
and Praeneste (Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 59-63; Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 12. 30).
The forms _Junonius_ and _Junonalis_ are recognised by Festus (p. 103,
ed. C. O. Müller). Their existence among the Latins seems to render
the derivation of _Junius_ from Juno quite certain, though that
derivation is doubted by Mr. W. Warde Fowler (_Roman Festivals of the
Period of the Republic_, pp. 99 _sq._).
Footnote 625:
Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 101-168; Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 12. 31-33;
Tertullian, _Ad nationes_, ii. 9; Varro, quoted by Nonius Marcellus,
_De compendiosa doctrina_, p. 390, ed. L. Quicherat. There was a
sacred beechen grove of Diana on a hill called Corne near Tusculum
(Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 242). But _Corne_ has probably no connection
with _Carna_. The grove of Helernus was crowded with worshippers on
the first of February (Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 67, where _Helerni_ is a
conjectural emendation for _Averni_ or _Asyli_). Nothing else is known
about Helernus, unless with Merkel (in his edition of Ovid’s _Fasti_,
pp. cxlviii. _sq._) we read _Elerno_ for _Eterno_ in Festus, p. 93,
ed. C. O. Müller. In that case it would seem that black oxen were
sacrificed to him. From the association of Carna with Janus it was
inferred by Merkel (_l.c._) that the grove of Helernus stood on or
near the Janiculum, where there was a grove of oaks (see above, p.
186). But the language of Ovid (_Fasti_, ii. 67) points rather to the
mouth of the Tiber.
Footnote 626:
See above, p. 185.
Footnote 627:
Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 129-168. A Roman bride on the way to her husband’s
house was preceded by a boy bearing a torch of buckthorn (_spina
alba_, Festus, _s.v._ “Patrimi,” p. 245, ed. C. O. Müller; Varro,
quoted by Nonius Marcellus, _De compendiosa doctrina_, _s.v._ “Fax,”
p. 116, ed. L. Quicherat). The intention probably was to defend her
from enchantment and evil spirits. Branches of buckthorn were also
thought to protect a house against thunderbolts (Columella, _De re
rustica_, x. 346 _sq._).
Footnote 628:
See above, p. 54.
Footnote 629:
Dioscorides, _De arte medica_, i. 119.
Footnote 630:
Scholiast on Nicander, _Theriaca_, 861.
Footnote 631:
Diogenes Laertius, _Vitae philosophorum_, iv. 54-57.
Footnote 632:
See above, p. 143.
Footnote 633:
Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 111 εἰκὸς μὲν οὖν ἐστι καὶ τὸν ἱερέα τοῦ Διὸς
ὥσπερ ἔμψυχον καὶ ἱερὸν ἄγαλμα καταφύξιμον ἀνεῖσθαι τοῖς δεομένοις; L.
Preller, _Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 201; F. B. Jevons,
_Plutarch’s Romane Questions_, p. lxxiii.; C. Julian, in Daremberg et
Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines_, ii. 1156
_sqq._
Footnote 634:
Cicero, _De re publica_, iii. 13. 22; Virgil, _Aen._ x. 112; Horace,
_Sat._ ii. 1. 42 _sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 37; Varro, _De lingua
Latina_, v. 6. 7; Livy, v. 21. 2, v. 23. 7; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxv.
115; Flavius Vopiscus, _Probus_, xii. 7; L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 205, 284; W. H. Roscher, _Lexikon d. griech.
u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. 600 _sqq._
Footnote 635:
See above, pp. 179 _sq._
Footnote 636:
Cicero, _Philippics_, ii. 43. 110; Suetonius, _Divus Julius_, 76; Dio
Cassius, xliv. 6. The coincidence has been pointed out by Mr. A. B.
Cook (_Classical Review_, xviii. 371).
Footnote 637:
Livy, i. 20. 1 _sq._
Footnote 638:
Numa was not the only Roman king who is said to have enjoyed the
favours of a goddess. Romulus was married to Hersilia, who seems to
have been a Sabine goddess. Ovid tells us how, when the dead Romulus
had been raised to the rank of a god under the name of Quirinus, his
widow Hersilia was deified as his consort. Thus, if Quirinus was a
Sabine oak-god, his wife would be an oak-goddess, like Egeria. See
Ovid, _Metam._ xiv. 829-851. Compare Livy, i. 11. 2; Plutarch, _Numa_,
14. On Hersilia as a goddess see A. Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_,
i. 478, note 10; L. Preller, _Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 372.
Again, of King Servius Tullius we read how the goddess Fortuna,
smitten with love of him, used to enter his house nightly by a window.
See Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 569 _sqq._; Plutarch, _Quaestiones Romanae_,
36; _id._, _De fortuna Romanorum_, 10. However, the origin and nature
of Fortuna are too obscure to allow us to base any conclusions on this
legend. For various more or less conjectural explanations of the
goddess see W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the Period of the
Republic_, pp. 161-172.
CHAPTER XIV
THE KING’S FIRE
[Sidenote: Sacred Marriage of the Fire-god with a woman.] Thus far we
have dealt mainly with those instances of the Sacred Marriage in which a
human being is wedded to the divine powers of vegetation or water. Now
we pass to the consideration of a different class of cases, in which the
divine bridegroom is the fire and his bride a human virgin. And these
cases are particularly important for our present enquiry into the early
Latin kingship, since it appears that the old Latin kings were commonly
supposed to be the offspring of the fire-god by mortal mothers. The
evidence which points to this conclusion is as follows.
[Sidenote: Legend of the birth of King Servius Tullius from the fire.]
First, let us take the legend of the birth of King Servius Tullius. It
is said that one day the virgin Ocrisia, a slave-woman of Queen
Tanaquil, the wife of King Tarquin the elder, was offering as usual
cakes and libations of wine on the royal hearth, when a flame in the
shape of the male member shot out from the fire. Taking this for a sign
that her handmaiden was to be the mother of a more than mortal son, the
wise Queen Tanaquil bade the girl array herself as a bride and lie down
beside the hearth. Her orders were obeyed; Ocrisia conceived by the god
or spirit of the fire, and in due time brought forth Servius Tullius,
who was thus born a slave, being the reputed son of a slave mother and a
divine father, the fire-god. His birth from the fire was attested in his
childhood by a lambent flame which played about his head as he slept at
noon in the king’s palace.[639] This story, as others have pointed out
before,[640] seems clearly to imply that the mother of Servius was a
Vestal Virgin charged with the care and worship of the sacred fire in
the king’s house. Now, in Promathion’s _History of Italy_, cited by
Plutarch, a similar tale was told of the birth of Romulus himself. It is
[Sidenote: Legend of the birth of Romulus from the fire.] said that in
the house of the King of Alba a flame like to the male organ of
generation hung over the hearth for many days. Learning from an oracle
that a virgin should conceive by this phantom and bear a son of great
valour and renown, the king bade one of his daughters submit to its
embraces, but she disdained to do so, and sent her handmaid instead.
Angry at her disobedience, her father ordered both the maidens to be put
to death. But Vesta appeared to him in a dream, forbade the execution,
and commanded that both the girls should be imprisoned until they had
woven a certain web, after which they were to be given in marriage. But
the web was never finished, for as fast as they wove it by day, other
maidens, in obedience to the king’s orders, unwove it at night. Meantime
the handmaiden conceived by the flame of fire, and gave birth to Romulus
and Remus.[641] In this legend, as in the story of the birth of Servius
Tullius, it is plain that the mother of the future King of Rome was both
a slave and a priestess of Vesta. Orthodox Roman tradition always
admitted that she was a Vestal, but naturally enough represented her as
the king’s daughter rather than his slave. The god Mars, it was said,
got her with child as she drew water in his sacred grove.[642] However,
when we compare this legend with the similar story of the birth of
Servius, we may suspect that Promathion has preserved, though perhaps in
a perverted form, an old feature of the Latin kingship, namely, that one
of the king’s parents might be, and sometimes was, a slave. Whether that
was so or not, such tales at least bear witness to an old belief that
the early Roman kings were born of virgins and of the fire. Similarly
Caeculus, the founder of Praeneste, passed for a [Sidenote: Legend of
the birth of Caeculus from the fire.] son of Vulcan. It was said that
his mother conceived him through a spark, which leapt from the fire and
struck her as she sat by the hearth. She exposed the child near a temple
of Jupiter, and he was found there beside a fire by some maidens who
were going to draw water. In after-life he proved his divine birth by
working an appropriate miracle. When an infidel crowd refused to believe
that he was the son of a god, he prayed to his father, and immediately
the unbelievers were surrounded with a flame of fire.[643] More than
this, the whole of the Alban dynasty appear to have traced their descent
from a Vestal, for the wife of King Latinus, their legendary ancestor,
was named Amata[644] or Beloved, and this was the regular title bestowed
on a Vestal after her election,[645] a title which cannot be fully
understood except in the light of the foregoing traditions, which seem
to shew that the Vestals were regularly supposed to be beloved by the
fire-god. Moreover, fire is said to have played round the head of
Amata’s daughter Lavinia,[646] just as it played round the head of the
fire-born Servius Tullius. As the same prodigy was reported of Julus or
Ascanius, the son of Aeneas,[647] we may suspect that a similar legend
was told of his miraculous conception at the hearth.
[Sidenote: The Vestal Virgins seem to have been regarded as the wives of
the fire-god.] Now we may take it as certain that the Romans and Latins
would never have traced the descent of their kings from Vestal Virgins
unless they had thought that such a descent, far from being a stain,
was, under certain circumstances, highly honourable. What the
circumstances were that permitted a Vestal to become a mother, not only
with impunity but with honour and glory, appear plainly from the stories
of the birth of Caeculus, Romulus, and Servius Tullius. If she might not
know a mortal man, she was quite free, and indeed was encouraged, to
conceive and bear a son to the fire-god. In fact the legends suggest
that the Vestals were regularly regarded as the fire-god’s wives. This
would explain why they were bound to chastity during their term of
service: the bride must be true to her divine bridegroom. And the theory
of chastity could be easily reconciled with the practice of maternity by
allowing a man to masquerade as the fire-god at a sacred marriage, just
as in Egypt the king disguised himself as the god Ammon when he wedded
the queen,[648] or as among the Ewe tribes the priest poses as the
python-god when he goes in to the human brides of the serpent.[649] Thus
the doctrine of the divine birth of kings presents no serious difficulty
to people who believe that a god may be made flesh in a man, and that a
virgin may conceive and bear him a son. Of course the theory of the
divine motherhood of the Vestals applies only to the early regal and
therefore prehistoric period. Under the Republic the demand for kings
had ceased, and with it, therefore, the supply. Yet a trace of the old
view of the Vestals as virgin mothers lingered down to the latest times
in the character of Vesta herself, their patroness and type; for Vesta
always bore the official title of Mother, never that of Virgin.[650] We
may surmise that a similar belief and practice once obtained in Attica.
For Erichthonius, king of Athens, is said to have been a son of the
fire-god Hephaestus by the virgin goddess Athena: the story told of his
miraculous birth from the ground, which had been impregnated by the seed
of the fire-god, is clearly a later version devised to save the
virginity of his mother.[651] The perpetual lamp of Athena, which burned
in the Erechtheum or house of Erechtheus (who was identical with
Erichthonius) on the acropolis of Athens,[652] may have answered to the
perpetual fire of Vesta at Rome; and it is possible that the maidens
called Arrephoroi or Errephoroi, who dwelt close to the Erechtheum,[653]
may at one time have personated Athena and passed, like the Vestals, for
wives of the fire-god.
[Sidenote: Rationalistic theory of the duties of the Vestals rejected.]
It has, indeed, been held that the Vestals were of old the king’s
daughters, who were kept at home and forbidden to marry for no other
reason than that they might devote themselves to the domestic duties of
drawing water, mopping the house, tending the fire, and baking
cakes.[654] But this rationalistic theory could hardly explain the
superstitious horror which the infidelity of a Vestal always excited in
the Roman mind. Customs which begin in reason seldom end in
superstition. It is likely, therefore, that the rule of chastity imposed
on the Vestals was based from the first on a superstition rather than on
a mere consideration of practical convenience. The belief that the
Vestals were the spouses of the fire-god would explain the rule.[655] We
have seen that the practice of marrying women to gods has been by no
means uncommon. If the spirit of the water has his human wife, why not
the spirit of the fire? Indeed, primitive man has a special reason for
thinking that the fire-god should always be married. What that reason
is, I will now try to explain.
[Sidenote: The Vestal fire of later times was a continuation of the fire
on the king’s hearth.] But first it is necessary to apprehend clearly
that the Vestal fire of republican and imperial Rome was strictly the
successor or continuation of the fire which in the regal period had
burned on the king’s hearth. That it was so appears plainly from the
stories of the birth of Romulus and Servius Tullius, which shew that
Vesta was believed to be worshipped at the royal fireside by maidens who
were either the king’s daughters or his slaves. This conclusion is amply
confirmed by a study of the temple of Vesta and the adjoining edifices
in the Roman Forum. For the so-called temple of the goddess never was,
strictly speaking, a temple at all. This fact we have on the authority
of Varro himself, the greatest of Roman antiquaries.[656] The little
round building in which the sacred fire always burned was merely a copy
of the round hut in which the king, like his [Sidenote: The round temple
of Vesta a copy of the ancient Italian hut.] subjects, had dwelt in days
of old. Tradition preserved a memory of the time when its walls were
made of wattled osiers and the roof was of thatch;[657] indeed, with
that peculiar clinging to the forms of the past which is characteristic
of royalty and religion, the inmost shrine continued down even to late
times to be fashioned of the same simple materials.[658] The hut of
Romulus, or what passed for it, constructed of wood, reeds, and straw,
was always preserved and carefully repaired in the original style. It
stood on the side of the Palatine hill facing the Circus Maximus.[659] A
similar hut, roofed with thatch, was in like manner maintained on the
Capitoline hill, and traditionally associated with Romulus.[660] The
so-called temple of Vesta in historical times stood not on any of the
hills, but in the Forum, at the northern foot of the Palatine. Its
situation in the flat ground is quite consistent with the view that the
building represents the king’s house of early, though not of the very
earliest, times; for, according to tradition, it was built by Numa in
this position between the Palatine and the Capitol, at the time when he
united the two separate towns on these hills and turned the low swampy
ground between them into their common place of assembly. Here, too,
beside the temple of Vesta, the king built himself a house, which was
ever afterwards known as the Regia or palace; formerly he had dwelt on
the Quirinal.[661] In after-times this old palace of the kings was
perhaps the official residence of their successor, the King of the
Sacred Rites.[662] Adjoining it was the house of the Vestals,[663] at
first, no doubt, a simple and unpretentious edifice, but afterwards a
stately pile gathered round a spacious open court which must have
resembled the cloister of a mediaeval monastery. We may assume that the
kernel of this group of buildings was the round temple of Vesta, and
that the hearth in it, on which burned the sacred fire, was originally
the hearth of the king’s house. That the so-called temple was built on
the model of the round huts of the old Latins is proved by the
discoveries made at an ancient necropolis near Albano. The ashes of the
dead were here deposited in urns, which are shaped like [Sidenote:
Hut-urns found at Albano and Rome.] little round huts with conical
roofs, obviously in order that the souls of the dead might live in
houses such as they had inhabited during life. The roofs of these
miniature dwellings are raised on cross-beams, sometimes with one or
more holes to let out the smoke. The door is fastened by a crossbar,
which is passed through a ring on the outside and tied to the two
side-posts. In some of these hut-urns the side-posts are duplicated, or
even triplicated, for the sake of ornament; and it is probable that the
ring of columns which encircled the little temple of Vesta in historical
times was merely an extension of the door-posts of the prehistoric hut.
The necropolis in which these urns were found must be very ancient,
since it was buried under the streams of lava vomited by the Alban
Mountain in eruption. But the mountain has not been an active volcano
within historical times, unless, indeed, the showers of stones and the
rain of blood often recorded as ominous prodigies by Roman writers may
be explained as jets of pumice and red volcanic dust discharged by one
of the craters.[664] The prehistoric burial-ground lately discovered in
the Roman Forum has yielded several hut-urns of precisely the same shape
as those of the Alban cemetery. Hence we may infer with tolerable
certainty that the earliest Latin settlers both on the Alban hills and
at Rome dwelt in round huts built of wattle and dab, with peaked roofs
of thatch.[665]